Copyright & Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.

So in other words you do not need to ask for permission to use their creations. The creators are happy to share their work, as long as you give attribution.

There are 6 kinds of Creative Commons licenses.

CC BY credit must be given to the creator ~ commercial use allowed

CC BY-SA credit must be given to the creator ~ adaptations must be shared under the same terms ~ commercial use allowed

CC BY-NC credit must be given to the creator ~ only noncommercial uses of the works are allowed.

CC BY-NC-SA credit must be given to the creator ~ only noncommercial use of the work are allowed ~ adaptations must be shared under the same terms

CC BY-ND credit must be given to the creator ~ NO adaptations of the work are allowed

CC BY-NC-ND credit must be given to the creator ~ only noncommercial use of the work are allowed ~ NO adaptations of the work are allowed.

How to Attribute Creative Commons Images?

Attributing means giving credit to the author of the work.

An example of how to Give Attribution to a picture

"flower" by kissmuch is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Title: "flower" (don’t worry if there is no title)
Creator/Author: kissmuch ~include a link to their profile page
Where is it from? "Flower" ~include a link so others can find it
CC License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ~include a link to the license

What is Public Domain?

After a copyright expires it becomes part of the public domain. This means that the work is owned by the public so you do NOT need permission to use it.

An example is:

Project Gutenberg: 60,000+ free eBooks. Contains some of the world’s greatest literature, for which the copyright has expired.

The Creative Commons Public Domain

CC0 (aka CC Zero) allows creators to give up their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain. CC0 allows reusers to use and adapt the creations with NO conditions.