Creative Commons

American  

noun

1. Sometimes creative commons a set of various licenses that allow people to share their copyrighted work to be copied, edited, built upon, etc., while retaining the copyright to the original work (often used attributively): a creative commons license.

   We’re happy for other sites to share these photos under Creative Commons;

   a creative commons license.

2. the nonprofit organization that releases these licenses.

---

Etymology

Origin of Creative Commons

First recorded in 2000–05

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Creative Commons

Wikipedia’s information is available under a Creative Commons license—it’s freely licensed.

From Slate ● Nov. 17, 2025

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2025

It also asserts she lifted an image without crediting the source as required by a Creative Commons license.

From Science Magazine ● Jan. 8, 2024

But unlike Creative Commons, which provides blanket licenses to wide swathes of people, a16z’s licenses lay out the relationship between an NFT buyer and the person who created the original art it’s linked with.

From The Verge ● Sep. 6, 2022

He also leads the steering committee which is setting up the Learning Commons, a division of Creative Commons aimed at facilitating access to open education resources.

From The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle