Of course, individuals and organizations constantly break these rules, and many go without punishment. They also act as a major impediment to finding great images, since the vast majority of photos online are not licensed under Creative Commons and can therefore not be used without express permission from the creators.

These licenses are a simple way for your to share your work-be it photos, art, music, academic research and beyond-while still protecting it from abuse or misuse.įor the rest of us, the photo-seekers, these licenses help us determine what photos we can use and whether they can be used to promote our content or our businesses. You also get to decide on what type of attribution is necessary and what rights you reserve. You can choose whether someone can build on or modify your photo or whether they need to keep it as is. In other words, if I’m a photographer, I can use these free licenses to very simply let people know if they can use my photos and how. In the interest of helping people make their original works publicly available, the organization created a series of “ free, easy-to-use copyright licenses” that “provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work - on conditions of your choice.” Many people don’t know that Creative Commons is actually a non-profit organization, not just a classification. To help you save time in finding great blog images, we break down the ins and outs of Creative Commons below. What people don’t understand is that images can only be used with proper attribution, and even then only if they fall under Creative Commons licensing. There’s a huge misconception that the web is this giant online repository of images that you can use at will. One of the most difficult parts of any blog work is finding images to accompany each post. We should all be loading up blogs with relevant, high-quality imagery. Visuals make the blog post more engaging, more interesting and more shareable. A good blogger knows the value of a good image.

Creative commons photos flickr