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Licensing Options: All Rights Reserved and Creative Commons

When you sourcemark a file, you declare your AI training preference — but you also tell the world how you want to be approached about licensing. This matters because an AI company that sees “not available for training” needs to know what comes next. Can they negotiate? Who do they contact? Under what terms?

Sourcemark gives you two broad paths: All Rights Reserved and Creative Commons.

All Rights Reserved

This is the default, and it reflects standard copyright. You own the work. Anyone who wants to use it needs your permission first. There is nothing to configure — it simply means “ask me.”

When you choose All Rights Reserved, you can also specify how interested parties should reach you. Sourcemark calls these licensing routes:

  • Direct contact— they reach out to you personally
  • Through an agent or representative— you designate someone who handles licensing inquiries on your behalf
  • Through a collective management organisation (CMO)— bodies like DACS, Artists Rights Society, or CISAC member organisations that manage rights for groups of creators

You can select one or more of these routes. The goal is to remove friction: instead of an AI company seeing “not available” and moving on, they see a clear path to having a conversation.

Note

Sourcemark does not set prices, negotiate deals, or process payments. It provides the contact pathway. The commercial conversation happens between you and the interested party, on your terms.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons licences are standardised, open licences that let you grant specific permissions upfront. Instead of “ask me first,” you are saying “here is what you can do without asking.”

The main conditions you can combine:

  • Attribution (BY)— others can use the work, but must credit you
  • Non-Commercial (NC)— use is allowed, but not for commercial purposes
  • No Derivatives (ND)— the work can be shared but not modified
  • Share Alike (SA)— adaptations must be released under the same licence

These combine into familiar licences like CC BY (most permissive — use it however you want, just credit me) or CC BY-NC-ND (most restrictive — share it with credit, but don't change it or make money from it).

When you select a Creative Commons licence in Sourcemark, that preference is recorded alongside your AI training declaration. An AI company querying the registry sees both: “This creator allows AI training” and “under a CC BY-NC licence,” for example. Or: “This creator does not allow AI training, but the work itself is CC BY-SA for other uses.”

Why this matters for AI training

The licensing question and the AI training question are related but separate. You might allow AI training freely under a Creative Commons licence. You might prohibit AI training but offer commercial licensing through your agent. You might allow training only under specific terms negotiated directly.

Sourcemark records both dimensions — training consent and licensing preference — so that anyone querying the registry gets the full picture. Not just “can I use this?” but “how do I get permission, and under what conditions?”

Choosing the right option

If you want to maintain full control and negotiate every use individually, All Rights Reserved with a clear contact route is the right choice. If you want your work to be widely available under defined conditions, Creative Commons gives you a well-understood framework.

Tip

There is no wrong answer. The important thing is that your preference is recorded, discoverable, and machine-readable — so it can actually be respected at scale.

Learn how Sourcemark works with industry provenance standards. Read about Content Credentials and C2PA.