What you need to know about using Creative Commons

Copyright law can be confusing. Which works can you use and how can they be used? Copyright law restricts your access to other people's work and restricts other people’s access to your work.

Creative works become copyrighted automatically the moment they’re made

There is no quick way of knowing whether something is owned or not

Creative Commons wanted to find an easy way to help people tell the world up front that they want to allow some uses of their work

CC lets you build a custom license with as many or as few restrictions as you want

The site will generate everything you need to license and share your creations

You don't need a lawyer to understand it

And it's free

CC isn’t meant to compete with copyright but compliment it

It allows you to retain your copyright while granting the world permission to make certain uses of it upon certain conditions

Copyright says "no trespassing" and "all rights reserved" while

Creative Commons says "please come in" and "some rights reserved" Permission has already been granted

Creative Commons offers 6 different licenses so that you can share your work exactly how you want to

All Creative Commons licenses require attribution (BY). This means that others may share your work so long as they credit you.

If you allow others to make changes to your work, you also need to think about whether or not you will require them to use the same license as you (SA). Share-Alike ensures that your work is always used under the terms you want, even after many generations of copies and derivatives

Do you want to allow others to make changes (derivatives) to your work without having to ask? Non-Derivative (ND) Prohibiting derivatives might prevent others from making something really cool out of your original. But, this also means they may not use your work in a way you disagree with.

Do you want to allow other people to sell or make money off of your creation without having to ask? Prohibiting people from using your work commercially may limit how widely it is spread. This also means that no one can make any money from your work without your permission. You can work out individual arrangements for commercial use so that you can get paid when others profit from your creation.

It's up to you to choose what you will create, and how you will share it with the world!

A good digital citizen always credits the ideas of others! Creative Commons licenses tell you if you can use the work and how you can use it

When creating a citation, a good rule of thumb is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.

There are many resources for finding Creative Commons-licensed images, music, and other media. A good place to start is the Creative Commons website.

Many services, including Flickr, SoundCloud, Google, Bing, and Vimeo, provide their own advanced search feature, making the search for CC licensed works quick and easy.

For more information, visit www.creativecommons.org.