ACreative Commons (CC) license enables free distribution of a copyrighted work such as a photograph, drawing, video etc. Files with Creative Commons Attribution (by) and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (by-sa) licenses may be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. However, they must not include Non-Commercial (nc) or No-Derivatives (nd) restrictions. {{CC-zero}} and {{CC-PD}} licenses are also accepted. All files with a Creative Commons license should have a tag showing which license applies.
Earlier versions of the Creative Commons licenses included "ports", where they were adapted to the copyright laws of specific countries. Version 4.0 of the Creative Commons licenses, released on November 25, 2013, are generic licenses that are applicable to most jurisdictions. Creative Commons has suspended the porting program and recommends use of the unported 4.0 licenses, as does Wikimedia.
A partial list of Creative Commons license tags is given below. See Commons:Marcas de direitos autorais do Creative Commons for a full list of allowed licenses. These include country specific licenses such as {{Cc-by-sa-3.0-vn}} that are based on the copyright laws of the country of origin, and more than 500 custom licenses such as {{ESA-Hubble}} that typically apply to files from a given source.
The Creative Commons Attribution (by) licenses allow free use as long as the author is attributed. Examples:
The Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (by-sa) licenses allow free use as long as the author is attributed and "share-alike" is required, meaning that copies or adaptations of the work must be released under the same or similar licence as the original. Examples:
The older licenses have been superseded by more recent versions. They are still available for use. Examples:
A small sample of source-specific Creative Commons licenses is given below. See Category:Custom CC license tags for a complete list of over 500 such licenses.
