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One of the most important aspects of Creative Commons licenses is that they are standardized. This makes it much easier for the public to understand how the licenses work and what reusers have to do to meet their obligations.

But CC licenses do not apply to works in a vacuum. CC-licensed works usually live on websites that have their own terms of service. Or sometimes, these works are not in formats that make it easy to reuse or adapt them. And the works are often available in hard-copy form for a price.

Have you ever found a CC-licensed work that you weren’t easily able to copy and share? What made it hard to reuse as intended? Was it an issue of technical format, or were there access restrictions on the work, or something else?

Acquiring Essential Knowledge

Creative Commons licenses are standardized licenses, which means the terms and conditions are the same for all works subject to the same type of CC license. This is an essential feature of their design, enabling the public to remix CC-licensed works. It also makes the licenses easy to understand.

But people and institutions that use the licenses have diverse needs and wants. Sometimes creators want slightly different terms rather than the standard terms that CC licenses offer.

Creative Commons strongly discourages people from customizing open copyright licenses because this creates confusion, requires users to take the time to learn about how the custom license differs, and eliminates the benefits of standardization. If you change any of the terms and conditions of a CC license, you cannot call it a Creative Commons license or otherwise use the CC trademarks. This rule also applies if you try to add restrictions on what people can do with CC-licensed work through your separate agreements, such as website terms of service. For example, your website’s terms of service can’t tell people they can’t copy a CC-licensed work (if they are complying with the license terms). You can, however, make your CC-licensed work available on more permissive terms and still call it a CC license. For example, you may waive your right to receive attribution.

Creative Commons has a detailed legal policy, Modifying the CC Licenses, (licensed CC BY 4.0 and available at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Modifying_the_CC_licenses) which outlines these rules. However, the best way to apply them is to ask yourself: “Is what I want to do going to make it easier or