{"id":"CC-BY-ND-4.0","title":"Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/CC-BY-ND-4.0.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record models the CC-BY-ND-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, the NoDerivatives restriction are all in the right place and the two clause texts are verbatim. Applied: spdx:licenseId. 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).","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carried no SPDX identifier although its own DALICC identifier is the SPDX list identifier CC-BY-ND-4.0, whose SPDX seeAlso URL is the cc:legalcode of this record. Added.","action":"applied","change":"spdx:licenseId \"CC-BY-ND-4.0\" ;"},{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"cc:legalcode","description":"cc:legalcode points at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcode and dct:source at the deed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:target","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Every modelled permission follows from the grant. Section 2(a)(1): the grant runs \"A. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and B. produce and reproduce, but not Share, Adapted Material.\"","action":"none"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The record permits odrl:modify and dalicc:ModifiedWorks while prohibiting odrl:derive. dalicc:ModifiedWorks is defined in the vocabulary as distributing a modified version of the work and making it available to the public, which this licence forbids: Section 2(a)(1)(B) grants the right to \"produce and reproduce, but not Share, Adapted Material.\" The permission should be a prohibition, or be dropped. Not applied here: all 97 NoDerivatives records of the library are modelled this way, so the change belongs in one sweep over the whole element set rather than in two records.","action":"proposed","change":"remove:\n    odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n            odrl:action dalicc:ModifiedWorks ]\nadd:\n    odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n            odrl:action dalicc:ModifiedWorks ] ;"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"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. The NoDerivatives prohibition is unchanged and no prohibition was added: Section 4(b) makes a database that holds a substantial portion of the contents Adapted Material, which this element set does not permit to be shared, and nothing in Section 4 lifts that. 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.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:suiGenerisDatabaseRights ;\n        odrl:duty [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                odrl:action cc:Attribution ],\n            [ a odrl:Duty ;\n                odrl:action cc:Notice ] ] ;"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"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).","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"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.","action":"proposed","change":"odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:addLimitation ] ;"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"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.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"odrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:sublicense ] ;"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:duty","description":"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. In this NoDerivatives record the modification-notice duty hangs on permissions that the licence does not grant for public sharing, which is a consequence of the dalicc:ModifiedWorks finding above rather than a separate defect.","action":"none"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"info","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"info","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"odrl:permission","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"record","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The six 4.0 records now differ from CC-BY-4.0 exactly where the element set differs and nowhere else: odrl:derive and cc:DerivativeWorks move to the prohibitions. 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.","action":"none"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"major","field":"dalicc:terminatesOnBreach","description":"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.","action":"applied"}],"family":"Creative Commons 4.0 International","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"notes":"The 4.0 International records are unported, so port_of and variant_kind are empty. This record is the reference model that the reviews of the 2.0 and 3.0 ports of the same element set compare their ports against. Nothing in this review is legal advice."}