Upon choosing a license at the Creative Commons page, Creative Commons tells you if the license is a Free Culture License, or whether it isn't.What is a Free Cultural Work?
What is a Creative Commons Free Cultural Work?
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The main idea is, Free Culture allows the covered work to be part of an ecosystem of reuse and improvement.This document defines Free Cultural Works as works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose.There are four freedoms which define a Free Cultural Licensethe freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using itthe freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from itthe freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expressionthe freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative worksAnd four attributes which additionally make a particular work a Free Cultural Work, beyond the license.Availability of source data: Where a final work has been obtained through the compilation or processing of a source file or multiple source files, all underlying source data should be available alongside the work itself under the same conditions. This can be the score of a musical composition, the models used in a 3D scene, the data of a scientific publication, the source code of a computer application, or any other such information.Use of a free format: For digital files, the format in which the work is made available should not be protected by patents, unless a world-wide, unlimited and irrevocable royalty-free grant is given to make use of the patented technology. While non-free formats may sometimes be used for practical reasons, a free format copy must be available for the work to be considered free.No technical restrictions: The work must be available in a form where no technical measures are used to limit the freedoms enumerated above.No other restrictions or limitations: The work itself must not be covered by legal restrictions (patents, contracts, etc.) or limitations (such as privacy rights) which would impede the freedoms enumerated above. A work may make use of existing legal exemptions to copyright (in order to cite copyrighted works), though only the portions of it which are unambiguously free constitute a free work.