Source material that is excluded through Creative Commons licences

A work that is stated to have a Creative Commons licence should not be considered to not be subject to copyright. A better way to look at these works is that the creator of the work has chosen to apply a more permissive kind of copyright in the form of a Creative Commons licence.

While these licences generally allow users of the work to do more with the work than they otherwise could, and by providing a set of standardised licence terms the licences provide greater clarity and consistency without the need to interpret bespoke copyright terms, it is not true that works with Creative Commons licences are not subject to copyright law.

Each Creative Commons licence carries its own terms that vary by the type of licence, most commonly that the work must be credited to its creator—but other terms may also apply—and users should take care to respect the creator’s wishes about how their work should be used.