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Creative Commons

A workshop on Creative Commons Licensing for copyright was held by the WALIS office.

What is Creative Commons?

The Creative Commons is an American non for profit organisation founded in 2001.  They offer free tools that enable authors, scientists, artists and educators to indicate the freedoms and restrictions they wish their work to carry. “Creative commons wants to define the spectrum of rights between full copyright-all rights reserved and the public domain –no rights reserved".

They provide a set of 6 licences that are based on copyright. Creative Commons enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights while retaining others, through a variety of licensing and contract schemes, which may include dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems which current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

Creative Commons Goals

  • Help creators articulate the intention to dedicate their works to the public domain or to disclaim some rights
  • Help them communicate these intentions clearly to others.
  • Make these works and the ways they may be used easy to identify
  • Expand the amount of material available to legally build upon and share.  A creative commons licence gives the holder the ability to determine how others may exercise your copyright rights.

Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different formats: the Commons Deed (human-readable code), the Legal Code (lawyer-readable code); and the metadata (machine readable code).

Non Exclusive

Creative Commons licences are non exclusive which means that the general public can be permitted to use the work under a Creative Commons Licence and at the same time enter into a different non exclusive licence with someone else. For example works may be exchanged for money.

Creative Commons licences are used by a wide range of organisations around the world and available in 37 jurisdictions including Australia.

This information has been adapted from the official Creative Commons website.


If you have any further queries, please contact the WALIS office at walis@walis.wa.gov.au or on 9273-7046.