Frequently Asked Questions

What are the differences between the Integrated Creative License and Creative Commons?

There are several differences between the two:

The inherent nature of Creative Commons allows redistribution of raw assets, whether modified or not. The ICL does not allow this under most circumstances. The only instance where this is allowed under the ICL is when something is licensed under either ICL-AC or ICL-NAR-AC and the asset(s) in question have been abandoned by the original copyright owner. “AC” in this case stands for “Abandonment Clause” and is not included in the standard ICL license. This means that when this exception isn’t part of the license, it does not apply.
There is no “ICL equivalent” of the CC BY-NC license, i.e. all ICL subtypes allow commercial use. This is because a non-commercial license would be an inherent violation of the royalty-free concept and too close to standard copyright law, rendering it mostly irrelevant.
Likewise, there is no “equivalent” of the CC BY-ND/CC BY-ND-NC licenses, since creating derivatives and integrated content is encouraged by the ICL. Hence, those licenses are inherently contradictory to the ICL.
The ICL requires attribution by default. Only when materials are licensed under either ICL-NAR or ICL-NAR-AC is attribution not required.

Note that we have no problem at all with Creative Commons licenses. We simply believe that different usecases demand different licensing. As a possible point of evidence, we even decided to license the contents of this very website under a CC BY-ND license. We decided upon this license to allow distribution of the website’s contents (even commercially), but to not take the provided information out of context.

Why do you advise against licensing software under the ICL?

The reason we advise against this is because code works inherently differently from creative assets. Source code is an inherently raw, disassembled format that can easily be taken apart piece by piece. It would be inefficient to allow redistribution of code only when it is part of a “greater whole”. We are strong proponents of free software and encourage its development. Consider a free software license (such as (A)GPL (version 2), MIT, BSD (3-Clause) or Apache 2.0) instead of the ICL.

I sell creative assets. Am I allowed to license them under the ICL?

Yes, absolutely. The ICL is about end user freedom to use your assets in a work, not about its price. “Royalty-free” does not necessarily mean “free of charge”, although they can of course coexist. In fact, charging for assets could halt its unauthorized spread to an extent, so it is definitely worth considering (though by no means required, of course).

Note that we discourage the use of any form of DRM, although we acknowledge the freedom of creators in this regard.

I'm developing a free software app. However, I want to license its assets under the ICL and encourage users to use their own assets in derivative works. Do you have any advice?

Since free software licensing does not cover the copyright of the assets used in the software (due to possible trademarks etc.), this is definitely possible. While we consider it the responsibility of the developer to be careful with the redistribution of their assets, there are several possible solutions:

The easiest solution is to include a copy of the ICL license of your choice in the source code repository. That way, you have a legal basis to enforce your copyright if it is ever infringed.
Another possible solution could be to provide only the source code, with no assets at all.
You could also replace the “real assets” in the public source code with placeholder assets that are licensed differently (e.g. CC0/public domain).

Those are just several approaches you could take. Code and creative assets are inherently distinct things and each require a different approach.

This is technically a proprietary license and I am not OK with that.

We understand that some creators prefer Creative Commons licensing since it does grant more user freedom. This is a choice best left to the copyright holder of the creation(s) in question. As we’ve already mentioned, we believe in different licensing for different usecases. But if our proprietary-yet-royalty-free license makes you uncomfortable, there are many other great licenses to choose from that we support 100%. By no means do we think our license is “superior” or “always the best choice”. We simply believe it is a possible choice, depending on the circumstances.