Once upon a time there was Copyright (you can’t touch this) and Public Domain (do as you will with this)…

Digital advancement and increased Internet use has seen the need to introduce variations of the Copyright law (US based) to cope with how originators and users deal with intellectual property.

In 2001, Creative Commons was formed so people could share, use and build upon other peoples’ work in a legal manner.

A Creative Commons license is free to obtain and here are the main types:

Attribution

This is the most lenient of licences.
People can show, copy, perform, share and make derivatives of your work giving credit the way you request it.
Symbol: Circle with a person in it
Example: Mary only wants credit for her work. Jack uses his own re-make of Mary’s poem, puts it on his website and credits her.

Non Commercial

People can show, copy, perform, share and make derivatives of your work giving credit the way you request it, but cannot make money from it.
Symbol: Circle with a diagonal bar over a dollar sign.
Example: Same as above, but Jack cannot sell the poem unless Mary agrees.

No Derivative Works

People can only use your work exactly as you made it.
Symbol: Circle with a double horizontal line in it.
Example: Jack can use Mary’s poem word for word.

Share Alike

Symbol: Circle with an inverted ‘C’ in it
Example: Jack can make a new work from Mary’s poem as long as he offers it with the same license.

So keep yourselves safe by checking out what is and what is not allowed when you are downloading images to use. For those that would like to share their images you can go and choose a licence for your work.

There are three ways your licence will be recorded.
1. An easy to read document with icons - Commons Deed
2. The 'legal'-ese jargon needed for court cases - Legal Code
3. A digital record whereby search engines and other programs can classify your work according to your terms of use - Digital Code

The symbols can be mix and matched. You can see the Creative Commons symbols here. You will have to scroll down a bit.