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2026

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Also known as Attribution 4.0, Attribution 4.0 International, CC BY 4.0, CC BY 4.0 International, CC-BY 4.0, CC-BY-4.0, CC-BY-4.0 International, Creative Commons BY 4.0, Creative Commons BY 4.0 International.

Commercial use
allowed
Share alike
not required
Attribution
required (keep the copyright and license notices)
Compare with… Add to the compatibility check Download JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML Text

Write this as a license text (needs an account) DALICC reads the model above and writes what it permits, requires and prohibits in plain English. Without an account, the Text download above writes the model out from the vocabulary.

Canonical URI https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/CC-BY-4.0

Permissions

  • Charge distribution fee from the text Charging a fee for the act of providing a copy of the work to someone else.
  • Commercial use from the text Using the work to generate income, directly or indirectly, for example by selling it or by using it in advertising.
  • Derivative works from the text Distributing an adaptation of the work and making it available to the public.
  • Derive from the text Creating a new work from the work, such as a translation, adaptation or arrangement of it or of a part of it.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Modification notice from the text Marking a changed work as changed, saying how it differs from the original and keeping earlier notices of change.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Display from the text Showing the work to the public without making a copy the viewer keeps.
  • Distribute from the text Providing copies of the work to the public or to anyone else.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Extract or reuse a substantial part of a database from the text Extracting or reusing all or a substantial part of the contents of a database that the sui generis database right protects.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Modified works from the text Distributing a modified version of the work that does not amount to a new, derivative work.
  • Modify from the text Altering the work, for example by updating it, without creating a new work; an alteration that creates a new work is Derive.

    Duties

    • Attribution from the text Giving credit to the copyright holders or authors of the work, in the form the licensor asks for.
    • Modification notice from the text Marking a changed work as changed, saying how it differs from the original and keeping earlier notices of change.
    • Notice from the text Notice: keeping the license and copyright notices with every copy.
  • Present from the text Performing the work in public, including by broadcast or other communication to the public.
  • Reproduce from the text Making copies of the work in any form.

Prohibitions

  • Change license from the text Not permitted: Change license. Replacing the license of the work, or of an adaptation, with another license, or changing its terms.
  • Promote from the text Not permitted: Promote. Using the name or trademarks of the licensor or of contributors to endorse or promote a product.
  • Sublicense from the text Not permitted: Sublicense. Granting a third party rights in the work under a license of the licensee's own, rather than passing on the original license.

License-wide duties

This license states no duties that apply to the work as a whole.

What applies by default

The statements above are the library's reading of this license: each is marked with the sentence it rests on, or as a library convention where the text is not explicit. The statements below are the ones the DALICC reasoner supplies for acts the license says nothing about, from the default rules of the dependency graph it reasons with. Each one names the legal source it rests on. None of it is in the record.

No default rule of that graph reaches this license: it speaks about every act the rules are about.

Further terms

These are the things the license says about itself beyond the acts it permits, forbids and requires: when it ends, how long there is to put a breach right, which law governs it, and so on. A term that comes from the DALICC vocabulary links to its definition.

Cure period
30 days
Terminates on breach
Yes

Clauses

Warranty disclaimer

Unless otherwise separately undertaken by the Licensor, to the extent possible, the Licensor offers the Licensed Material as-is and as-available, and makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the Licensed Material, whether express, implied, statutory, or other. This includes, without limitation, warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or the presence or absence of errors, whether or not known or discoverable. Where disclaimers of warranties are not allowed in full or in part, this disclaimer may not apply to You.

Limitation of liability

To the extent possible, in no event will the Licensor be liable to You on any legal theory (including, without limitation, negligence) or otherwise for any direct, special, indirect, incidental, consequential, punitive, exemplary, or other losses, costs, expenses, or damages arising out of this Public License or use of the Licensed Material, even if the Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such losses, costs, expenses, or damages. Where a limitation of liability is not allowed in full or in part, this limitation may not apply to You.

Info

Target asset types
Creative work (i.e. text, picture, sound, movie), Dataset
Region / jurisdiction
Worldwide
Validity
Perpetual
Source
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Legal code
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
This description is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publisher
Creative Commons
SPDX identifier
CC-BY-4.0 on the SPDX license list
DALICC identifier
CC-BY-4.0

This record is published under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: DALICC License Library, DALICC - Verein zur Förderung der Rechtssicherheit in der Datenbewirtschaftung, https://dalicc.net, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The license it describes belongs to its publisher.

Use this license

Everything below is generated from this record. Replace the example address with the address of your own work.

JSON sidecar 

{
  "license-uri": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/CC-BY-4.0",
  "license-title": "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International",
  "spdx-id": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "attribution": "Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holder]",
  "asset": null,
  "generated-by": "DALICC"
}

RDF, Turtle 

@prefix cc: <http://creativecommons.org/ns#> .

<https://example.org/my-work>
    cc:license <https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/CC-BY-4.0> .

RDF, JSON-LD 

{
  "@context": {
    "cc": "http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
  },
  "@id": "https://example.org/my-work",
  "cc:license": {
    "@id": "https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/CC-BY-4.0"
  }
}

HTML attribution 

<p>This work is licensed under <a href="https://dalicc.net/licenselibrary/CC-BY-4.0" rel="license">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International</a>.</p>

This license asks for attribution, so the credit line is part of it.

Badge DALICC badge for Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Markdown 

[![License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International](https://dalicc.net/license-library/CC-BY-4.0/badge.svg)](https://dalicc.net/license-library/CC-BY-4.0)

HTML 

<a href="https://dalicc.net/license-library/CC-BY-4.0"><img src="https://dalicc.net/license-library/CC-BY-4.0/badge.svg" alt="License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International"></a>

Review

Status
Reviewed against the license text
Last checked
2026-09-15
Reviewer
Giray Havur
Verdict
corrected during the review
Record changed since this review
yes (version 2, 2026-09-24)
Findings
18 recorded, 4 applied to the record, 1 proposed, 1 settled in a later version

The record models the CC-BY-4.0 element set of the Creative Commons 4.0 International suite and, after the corrections, it matches the legal text: the grant, the attribution and notice conditions are all in the right place and the two clause texts are verbatim. Applied: spdx:licenseId, foaf:logo. What is left is either interpretive or beyond the vocabulary: the no-additional-restrictions and no-DRM clause of Section 2(a)(5)(B), and termination with its cure period. On 2026-09-23 the database right of Section 4 was applied as a dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights permission carrying the conditions of Section 3(a).

17 findings

  • minor Rubric 1 spdx:licenseId applied

    The record carried no SPDX identifier although its own DALICC identifier is the SPDX list identifier CC-BY-4.0, whose SPDX seeAlso URL is the cc:legalcode of this record. Added.

  • info Rubric 1 cc:legalcode none

    cc:legalcode points at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode and dct:source at the deed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Both resolve and both name version 4.0 of this element set. The pair legal code plus deed is the convention of the six 4.0 records and is not a mismatch.

  • minor Rubric 1 foaf:logo applied

    The record was the only one of the 343 in the library still pointing at the retired host i.creativecommons.org for its licence button, while 291 records use licensebuttons.net. The old host redirects to the new one and the image is the same. Updated for family consistency.

  • info Rubric 2 odrl:target none

    The asset collection is dalicc:CreativeWork plus dcmitype:Dataset, which fits a licence that is media neutral by design and, through Section 4, covers databases as well. dcmitype:Software is absent from all six 4.0 records, which is correct: Creative Commons does not recommend these licences for software.

  • info Rubric 3 odrl:permission none

    Every modelled permission follows from the grant. Section 2(a)(1): "the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to: A. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and B. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material."

  • major Rubric 3 odrl:permission applied

    Section 4 of the legal code, Sui Generis Database Rights, grants the database right where the Licensed Rights include it, and the record carried nothing for it. Section 4(a): "for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(a)(1) grants You the right to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database". Section 4(b) adds that a database into which You include all or a substantial portion of the contents, and in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights, is Adapted Material. Section 4(c): "You must comply with the conditions in Section 3(a) if You Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database". dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights, which the vocabulary defined on 2026-09-15 for exactly this clause and which eight data licences of the library already carry, is now a permission of this record, with the cc:Attribution and cc:Notice duties that Section 3(a) requires: the same pair the copyright grant carries on odrl:distribute, because Section 4(c) sends the reader to the same conditions. Under the proposed default rule eu-sui-generis-db of licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_eu.ttl the database right is not granted unless the licence grants it, so a record that is silent reads as a licence that keeps the right back. This text grants it, and the record now says so.

  • info Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition none

    dalicc:promote is prohibited, which rests on Section 2(b)(2), patent and trademark rights are not licensed, and on Section 2(a)(6), the no-endorsement clause. dalicc:ChangeLicense is prohibited, which rests on Section 2(a)(5)(B).

  • major Rubric 4 odrl:prohibition proposed

    Section 2(a)(5)(B) is not modelled: "You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological Measures to, the Licensed Material if doing so restricts exercise of the Licensed Rights by any recipient of the Licensed Material." The first half is expressible today with dalicc:addLimitation, which the vocabulary defines as adding further limitations when redistributing and which three licences of the library already use. Not applied: the same clause stands in every Creative Commons record of the library, 2.0 and 3.0 ports included, so adding it to six records alone would split the compatibility behaviour of the family. The second half, the technological measures, has no term at all, see the vocabulary gaps below.

  • info Rubric 5 odrl:duty none

    The duties are cc:Attribution and cc:Notice on odrl:distribute, and cc:Attribution, cc:Notice and dalicc:modificationNotice on odrl:modify and odrl:derive, which matches Section 3(a)(1): the conditions bite when You Share the material, and Section 3(a)(1)(B) adds the obligation to "indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and retain an indication of any previous modifications." No duty is duplicated and none sits at the wrong level.

  • info Rubric 6 dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer none

    dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and dalicc:LiabilityLimitation are verbatim Sections 5(a) and 5(b) of the 4.0 legal code, checked word for word against the text; the record uses the sentence-case rendering of the SPDX text rather than the upper-case rendering of the HTML legal code. Section 5(c), the interpretation rule, and Section 7, other terms and conditions, are not carried anywhere in the record: dalicc:additionalClauses is absent from all six 4.0 records.

  • info Rubric 7 cc:jurisdiction none

    cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual, both supported: Section 2(a)(1) grants a worldwide licence and Section 6(a) runs the term for the term of the copyright and similar rights licensed. The 4.0 licences are international and unported, so no country belongs in this field.

  • gap Rubric 8 odrl:permission none

    Section 4, Sui Generis Database Rights, is the substantive addition of version 4.0 over 3.0 and the record does not carry it: "for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(a)(1) grants You the right to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database". ODRL already has odrl:extract, which no record of the library uses; the reuse half and the rule that a database built from a substantial portion counts as Adapted Material would need a term of their own. Proposed terms: odrl:extract as a permission plus dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights for the clause. The clause itself was applied on 2026-09-23 as the dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights permission of the rubric 3 finding above, with the conditions of Section 3(a) as its duties. What is still without a term of its own is odrl:extract for the extraction half, which no record of the library uses, and the rule of Section 4(b) that a database holding a substantial portion of the contents is itself Adapted Material.

  • gap Rubric 8 odrl:prohibition none

    The prohibition on applying Effective Technological Measures, Section 2(a)(5)(B) has no vocabulary term. Proposed term: dalicc:applyTechnicalProtectionMeasures, an odrl:Action to be used as an odrl:Prohibition. The mirror image in Section 2(a)(4), the authorisation to circumvent technological measures in order to exercise the licensed rights, has none either.

  • gap Rubric 8 record none

    Three more clauses have no term. Section 6(a), automatic termination on breach, with the 30 day cure period of Section 6(b)(1) that is new in 4.0; Section 2(a)(5)(A), the automatic offer from the licensor to every downstream recipient; and Section 2(b), the reservation of moral, publicity, privacy, patent and trademark rights together with the waiver of royalty collection through a collecting society. Proposed terms: dalicc:terminationOnBreach, dalicc:cureperiod, dalicc:downstreamOffer, dalicc:moralRightsReserved, dalicc:royaltyCollectionWaiver.

  • info Rubric 9 record none

    The consistency check with the 41 axioms of licensedata/dependencygraph/dg_default.ttl reports no conflict, before and after the corrections, and the pre-review baseline listed none either.

  • info Rubric 10 record none

    The six 4.0 records now differ from CC-BY-4.0 exactly where the element set differs and nowhere else: this record is the reference model of the set and, for the review, of all 287 Creative Commons ports as well. Before this review the two ShareAlike records also lacked dalicc:chargeDistributionFee and CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 had an empty target, so the set was not uniform. The deontic model still cannot tell a 4.0 record from a 2.0 or 3.0 port of the same element set, which the review of duplicates (see the review method, docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md section 3) sets out in full.

  • major Rubric 7 dalicc:terminatesOnBreach applied

    Section 6(a) reads: "However, if You fail to comply with this Public License, then Your rights under this Public License terminate automatically." Section 6(b) reinstates the rights "automatically as of the date the violation is cured, provided it is cured within 30 days of Your discovery of the violation". dalicc:terminatesOnBreach is true and dalicc:curePeriod is "30 days", as on the GNU GPL 3.0 records, whose section 8 ends the licence on a breach and restores it when the breach is put right within 30 days. The unported 1.0 to 3.0 records and the jurisdiction ports carry the termination without a cure period, because their text has no reinstatement clause.

Settled in version 2 (1)

  • settled odrl:prohibition

    Sublicensing is not modelled. Section 2(a)(1) grants a "non-sublicensable" licence and Section 2(a)(5)(A) replaces sublicensing with an automatic offer from the licensor to every downstream recipient, so a licensee may not put the material under a licence of their own. The vocabulary has dalicc:sublicense, defined and used by no record. The association's review decided provisionally that the sublicensing prohibition should be modelled on every Creative Commons record, so it is recorded here with the exact triple and applied in one library-wide sweep rather than in six records.

Report an issue The review record as JSON The review checks the model against the license text. It is not legal advice.

History

This license model has 2 versions. Version 2 is the one served today; every earlier version keeps its own address, so a conclusion drawn from one of them can still be checked against it.

  1. Version 2 current2026-09-24 Giray Havur

    The content review of 2026-09-15 added 1 identification detail and 1 prohibition, changed 1 identification detail and recorded the review state. Later changes recorded what the text says about the database right, recorded when the license ends on a breach and named the license the record itself is published under.

    View JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

    9 changes

    • added dalicc:reviewStatus dalicc:Reviewed

      Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.

    • added dalicc:reviewedOn "2026-09-15"^^xsd:date

      Review state Every record records how far it has come in the editorial workflow and when it was last checked against the legal text.

    • changed foaf:logo <https://licensebuttons.net/l/by/4.0/88x31.png>

      was foaf:logo <http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png>

      Review finding The record was the only one of the 343 in the library still pointing at the retired host i.creativecommons.org for its licence button, while 291 records use licensebuttons.net. The old host redirects to the new one and the image is the same. Updated for family consistency.

    • added prohibition dalicc:sublicense

      Review decision Review decision 1: every Creative Commons record except the CC0 dedication, plus the Open Database License and the Open Data Commons Attribution License, forbids sublicensing in as many words.

    • added spdx:licenseId "CC-BY-4.0"

      Review finding The record carried no SPDX identifier although its own DALICC identifier is the SPDX list identifier CC-BY-4.0, whose SPDX seeAlso URL is the cc:legalcode of this record. Added.

    • added permission dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights with duties [cc:Attribution, cc:Notice]

      Manual edit Section 4 of the 4.0 text grants the database right where it applies: "for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(a)(1) grants You the right to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database", and Section 4(c) carries the conditions of Section 3(a) over to it. dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights is now permitted, with the attribution and notice duties of the copyright grant.

    • added dalicc:curePeriod "30 days"

      Manual edit Section 6(b) reinstates the rights "automatically as of the date the violation is cured, provided it is cured within 30 days of Your discovery of the violation".

    • added dalicc:terminatesOnBreach "true"^^xsd:boolean

      Manual edit Section 6(a) reads: "However, if You fail to comply with this Public License, then Your rights under this Public License terminate automatically."

    • added dct:license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>

      Manual edit Every record is published under CC BY 4.0. cc:license names the record DALICC keeps of that licence; dct:license now names it by the address Creative Commons publishes it at, so that a consumer matching the canonical IRI finds it.

  2. Version 1

    The version this model had before the content review of 2026-09-15.

    View JSON-LD Turtle RDF/XML

Every change names the reason behind it: a finding of the content review, one of its library-wide decisions, the metadata that review wrote onto every record, or a hand edit. None of it is legal advice.

Jurisdiction ports and editions

48 national versions of earlier editions (2.0 to 3.0) of this license. Each has its own record; they are listed here because they belong to the same family, not because they say the same. See port and edition in the glossary.

48 jurisdiction ports

Nothing on this page is legal advice. What a license means is decided by its text; ask a legal advisor before you rely on it.