Creative Commons: Legally use content
Image by Mr. T in DC
When writing content for your site, it’s important to beef it up with information your demographic will find both interesting and useful. As content providers, we owe it to our readers to keep the facts and details in our write-ups accurate and up-to-date so it’s only logical that we conduct research online. As for both the aesthetics and the usability factors, on the other hand, you can easily spruce our blog posts with photos, videos and other multimedia contents. These can help guide the reader through reading your piece, supply supplementary insights or just provide some graphic elements for layout.
However, there are times that the source materials or multimedia files you find are under strict copyrights from their originators and mere attribution may not be enough. So you can either contact the author or artists/photographer to get the proper permission to use or quote or their works, or you can simply instead look for legal. This is where Creative Commons becomes a vital resource for you.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization built on top of the copyleft licensing which allows the legal distribution, use and modification of digital works. In a nutshell, content providers can have their works shared under a variety of its licenses and those who seek to use works are free to do so as long as they follow the license agreements their desired works are specified under. Attribution is essential here, and so
In a previous post, we showed you a handful of sites online where you can find images for your blog; these options feature a way to search via Creative Common license to make sure you find what you need without getting you into any legal rut.
In addition to these, you can simply drop by the CC site at www.creativecommons.org and conduct you search there. The site integrates searches for different multimedia sites including Google Search, Google Images, Yahoo Search, Flickr, BlipTV and Jamendo. Here’s a quick guide to the licenses under CC you can scan before you data mine that URL and use anything you find online.
- Attribution- the most lenient of the lot as it allows you to freely use, distribute and remix or tweak any piece of work licensed under it. By “remix or tweak,” it means you can resize or modify photos via any tool or filter in your graphic editing software, re-edit video footages or create remixes and mashups on audios under this license as you see fit. Like all the licenses here though, proper attributions are crucial and it should be stressed that it should NOT seem like the original creator is endorsing you or your use of their work.
- Attribution Share Alike- works under this license can be remixed, tweaked and can be used for commercial purposes. Your resulting work will have the same licensing specifications, so anyone can also modify your version of the original work.
- Attribution No Derivatives- unlike the previous license, Attribution No Derivatives allows you to use the work in any context whether it’s for commercial use or otherwise as long as it remains unchanged. This means that it completely drops the “remix and tweak” clause, preventing even image cropping or even superimposed labeling.
- Attribution Non-Commercial- as its name implies, this license lets you remix and tweak on an existing work under this license as long as you don’t intend to use it commercially. This means NO to image use for advertising products and services and other marketing promotion materials.
- Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike- If you find a work you’d like to use and it’s under Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike, you can remix and tweak it for non-commercial use and the resulting work automatically carries the same license specifications. Similarly, other people can do the same with your work and the license is carried into their ensuing works.
- Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives- The complete polar opposite of the Attributions license, Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives is the most restrictive of the bunch. Sure you can use the work as long as you attribute and link back to the creator, but you’re going to have to use it in its pure form, aka no form of modification is allowed and you can’t use it in any commercial capacity. Aptly enough, the CC site refers to it as the “free advertising” license.
This is a part of a series of posts about writing content specifically for blogs. We’ll present you with a few blogging essentials, updates and maybe a technical trick or two to enrich your blog. Stay tuned to SEOP.com for more. Or better yet, sound off on the comments below and subscribe to our RSS feed or our daily mail for notifications of new posts.
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RSpears @ August 23, 2010
People have been asking me for years how you have become such a successful writer. Creativity I believe comes within. But the other side of the coin is that people can achieve greatness through perseverance and hard work. I have come across some very talented writers and speakers who have reached their mettle by hard work and focused steps. I don’t believe that miracles happen in writing. You have to be either born into excellence or that you come across a perspective that makes you unbelievable in life.
Writing is like religion. It tends to outrun generations. People die in the bizarre masquerade of existence. Words will outrun existence. This is the beauty of words. Writers don’t typically keep this in perspective but believe that they have written sentences and ideas that will transgress time. We read about hundreds of great writers of earlier years who have endorsed this fact. Writing is a talent that has to be nurtured. Without water and sun, plants die. Similarly, without curiosity and the willingness to expand, writers end up not achieving greatness. Visit us at http://www.contentintegrators.com to learn more.
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