Informations about the different type of licenses usually used for NFTs Any more question? Join our discord http://chat.beyondnft.io

Why Licensing your creations

Licensing your creation is important for your rights as a creator but also for the collectors that are going to buy your creations.

License are a way to quickly and clearly give information about how the NFT can be used by their owner. It might be only for display, but it can also be very permissive like allowing the collectors / owners to use the NFT they own for commercial purpose (creating t-shirts, mugs, reusing in commercials, banners etc...)

NFT License

One well known license is the NFT License (https://www.nftlicense.org/)

Created by the people of DapperLabs (the one who brought us the CryptoKitties) this is a license that allows owners to sell the NFT, display it for personal use, display it on other apps and even to create merchandising on it.

It however restricts some usage like trying to trademark or modifying it.

Creative Commons

Creative commons are licenses that are used a lot in digital art but also for software distribution.

There are several of them and they all have some specificity allowing or not some usages

You can find an article on the difference of each of them here: https://creativecommonsusa.org/index.php/ufaqs/what-are-the-different-types-of-cc-licenses/

• Attribution CC BY or "CC BY 4.0"
  • This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
• Attribution ShareAlike CC BY-SA or "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  • This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
• Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND or "CC BY-ND 4.0"
  • This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
• Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC or "CC BY-NC 4.0"
  • This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA or "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0"
  • This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND or "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0"
  • This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Recommendation