Intellectual property (IP) is an incredibly important topic in the digital age. The phrase refers to how a person who comes up with a unique, creative idea owns that idea. An analogy might be: If someone collected together a bunch of random pieces of wood and created a table with them, the person would own that thing they created. Although ideas are intangible (can't be touched), they are still created by specific people, and legally, those people are the owners of those ideas.

Can you see how this is related to citation? Whether you copy down someone's exact words, or whether you put someone else's idea into your own words (paraphrasing), you have to give credit to the original creator of those words or ideas. IP follows similar rules.

It is easier than ever to make copies of files, whether they are written documents, music files, or video files of movies or TV shows. Even physical objects can now be easily copied and re-created, particularly with photos and 3-D printers. But there are laws in place that make it illegal to copy other people's work.

However, there are also ways to give others permission to use your ideas. One option is to label your work with a Creative Commons license. These are labels that let users know with quick glance how you'd like to share your work.

If you are going to borrow someone's ideas or images, you should look for work that has a Creative Commons license. There are quite a few sites that let users share and display Creative Commons licensed work, like flickr.com, The Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube, and others.

You can also filter your Google search results by usage rights (see image below).