Editing Creative Commons license (section)

=== Four rights ===
The CC licenses all grant "baseline rights", such as the right to distribute the copyrighted work worldwide for non-commercial purposes and without modification.<ref>{{Cite web |date=June 12, 2008 |title=Baseline Rights |url=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Baseline_Rights |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100208081209/http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Baseline_Rights |archive-date=February 8, 2010 |access-date=February 22, 2010 |publisher=[[Creative Commons]] |df=mdy-all}}</ref> In addition, different versions of license prescribe different rights, as shown in this table:<ref name="Creative Commons-2020">{{Cite web |last=<!--Not stated--> |date=28 August 2020 |title=Frequently Asked Questions |url=https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-are-creative-commons-licenses |access-date=26 November 2020 |website=Creative Commons |publisher=Creative Commons Corporation |archive-date=November 27, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101127205528/http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#what-are-creative-commons-licenses |url-status=live }}</ref>

{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;"
|-
! Icon !! Right ||  Description
|-
| [[File:Cc-by new.svg|75px|Attribution]]
| [[Attribution (copyright)|Attribution]] (BY)
| Licensees may copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivative works and remixes based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits ([[attribution (copyright)|attribution]]) in the manner specified by these. Since version 2.0, all Creative Commons licenses require attribution to the creator and include the BY element. The letters BY are not an abbreviation, unlike the other rights.
|-
| [[File:Cc-sa.svg|75px|Share-alike]]
| [[Share-alike]] (SA)
| Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to ("not more restrictive than") the license that governs the original work. (See also ''[[Copyleft]]''.) Without share-alike, derivative works might be sublicensed with compatible but more restrictive license clauses, e.g. CC BY to CC&nbsp;BY-NC.
|-
| [[File:Cc-nc.svg|75px|Non-commercial]]
| [[Creative Commons NonCommercial license|Non-commercial]] (NC)
| Licensees may copy, distribute, display, perform the work and make derivative works and remixes based on it only for [[non-commercial]] purposes.
|-
| [[File:Cc-nd.svg|75px|Non-derivative]]
| No [[derivative works]] (ND)
| Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not [[derivative work]]s and [[Remix culture|remixes]] based on it. Since version 4.0, derivative works are allowed but must not be shared.
|}

The last two clauses are not [[free content]] licenses, according to definitions such as [[DFSG]] or the [[Free Software Foundation]]'s standards, and cannot be used in contexts that require these freedoms, such as [[Wikipedia]]. For [[software]], Creative Commons includes three free licenses created by other institutions: the [[BSD License]], the GNU [[LGPL]], and the GNU [[GPL]].<ref name="GNU LGPL">{{Cite web |title=Creative Commons GNU LGPL |url=https://creativecommons.org/license/cc-lgpl |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090622222019/http://creativecommons.org/license/cc-lgpl |archive-date=June 22, 2009 |access-date=July 20, 2009}}</ref>

Mixing and matching these conditions produces sixteen possible combinations, of which eleven are valid Creative Commons licenses and five are not. Of the five invalid combinations, four include both the "ND" and "SA" clauses, which are mutually exclusive; and one includes none of the clauses. Of the eleven valid combinations, the five that lack the "BY" clause have been retired because 98% of licensors requested attribution, though they do remain available for reference on the website.<ref name="Creative Commons-3">{{Cite web |title=Retired Legal Tools |url=https://creativecommons.org/retiredlicenses/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160503224254/https://creativecommons.org/retiredlicenses/ |archive-date=May 3, 2016 |access-date=May 31, 2012 |publisher=[[Creative Commons]] |df=mdy}}</ref><ref name="Creativecommons.org-2004">{{Cite web |date=May 25, 2004 |title=Announcing (and explaining) our new 2.0 licenses |url=https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921060401/http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216 |archive-date=September 21, 2013 |access-date=September 20, 2013 |publisher=Creativecommons.org |df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref name="Creative Commons-2">{{Cite web |title=About The Licenses – Creative Commons |url=https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150726003931/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |archive-date=July 26, 2015 |access-date=July 26, 2015 |publisher=[[Creative Commons]] |df=mdy-all}}</ref> This leaves six regularly used licenses plus the CC0 [[public domain]] declaration.