The Creative Commons
The Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that creates licenses that are focused on intended sharing of copyrighted works. They create legal licenses for artists to assign to their works, and then provide easy to read "deeds" that you can share which summarizes the requirements of the license. Creative Commons works are not public domain, instead they have their own licenses that you need to follow with different levels of restrictions.
License Attributes (Types)
The 6 different creative commons licenses are composed using one or more of these common attributes:
- BY (Attribution); you must give credit to the original creator
- SA (Share Alike); your work must be licensed under the same or stricter license as the original work's license.
- NC (Non-commercial); you can't use this work for commercial profits
- ND (No Derivatives); you can use this work only in its original state, with no changes or modifications.
Creative Commons Zero
The CC0 License is not the same as public domain works, but it is meant to work similar. CC0 licenses have no restrictions and are used to provide work free of use without credit or restrictions. This is needed because Public Domain only comes into affect 50 years after death. This allows a creator to immediately waive their copyright privilege's and make something effectively public domain despite the creator still being alive.
Learn more about the 7 different Creative Commons Licenses here: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/