Creative Commons License Explained

I was wondering if there are any copyright issues for using images from Flickr on your blog. I wasn’t completely sure, so I decided to look it up. Most pictures on Flickr are registered under creative commons license.

I googled and quickly found two useful articles about creative commons. A nice article on shoutmeloud.com about understanding copyright and creative common licesing and another post on evolutionarydesigns.net explains what is creative commons and how does it work.

You can also read about creative commons license on the actual Creative Commons website and there’s a big article about it on Wikipedia and on Flickr.

What is Creative Commons

“Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright.”

License Conditions

Creators choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work.

Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike means:
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

What have I learned?

You’re not allowed to use any photo from Flickr (or from anywhere else on the internet for that matter) on your blog. Make sure it’s licensed under creative commons. If you did not find a copyright symbol or a creative commons logo, it is copyrighted.

1. Share photos and videos on multiple sites from your mobile phone