Menu Close

Data licenses

Data licenses in SBDI

All data provided and aggregated by SBDI require a license. The provision of a license provides a simple, standardized, method for determining the conditions under which data made available through SBDI may be used.

Here we list three licenses that can be applied to data published through SBDI:

Creative Commons No rights reserved license (CC0)

Under this license the data provider has waived any rights to the data under copyright or Intellectual Property Rights law.

This license allows you to:

  • Copy, modify and distribute the data, including for commercial purposes, without seeking permission from the data provider.

More information on this license can be found on the Creative Commons website

Creative Commons license with attribution (CC-BY)

Data available under this license can be used for any purpose, including commercial use.

This license allows you to:

  • Share – copy and redistribute the data in any medium or format
  • Adapt – remix, transform and build upon the data

You must:

  • Give appropriate credit to the data provider
  • Provide a link to the license
  • Indicate if any changes have been made

More information on this license can be found on the Creative Commons website

Creative Commons with attribution non-commercial (CC-BY-NC)

Data under this license can be used under the same conditions as the CC-BY license except the data cannot be used for commercial purposes.

Guidance on what may be considered commercial and non-commercial use can be found here.

More information on this license can be found on the Creative Commons website 

Important information

One important aspect of a Creative Commons license to note is that they are irrevocable. This means that, while you are free to stop offering data under a Creative Commons license at any time, anyone who has a copy of that dataset prior to it being removed, or the license amended, will still be able to use it under the conditions of the original license.

For example, if you originally provide a dataset on a CC-BY license but then decide to change it to a CC-BY-NC license, anyone who downloaded the data while it was under a CC-BY license can continue to use it for commercial purposes. Anyone who downloads the data once the CC-BY-NC license had been implemented would not be able to use the data commercially.