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Copyright: Image Sources and Content: Creative Commons licences

Creative Commons Licenses

This is a non-profit organization, set up to simplify and standardize methods of sharing copyrighted materials. It's an incredible asset for the education sector, and something everyone needs to be familiar with. More details on the work of the organization can be found here: About Creative Commons

The licenses and identifying codes

There is a vast amount of materials released under Creative Commons, or CC, licenses, including images. All materials released under a CC license will display one of the images below, depending upon how the owner wishes the material to be used. With all these licenses the original rights holder must be attributed. 

The text in each license describes how you can you use any material released under it. For example, the top right-hand license is CC BY NC SA When this is broken down: 

  • CC = Creative Commons | BY = attribution | NC = Non-Commercial | SA = share alike 

So for this license, you're free to edit the work but only in a non-commercial setting (hence NC) such as education, and you then must release your edited version under the same license (hence SA: Share Alike) 

They range from the very flexible - top left of the image - with CC-BY, meaning you are free to distribute, adapt and change the material, for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

At the other end of the scale - bottom right - is NC-ND, the license with the most restrictions, which stands for NC Non-Commercial ND No Derivatives. So for this one, you can download and share, but not alter any of the content or materials. All CC licenses have one thing in common, in that they all require the rights holder to be credited/attributed.

Creative Commons also has a very user-friendly section of the website which goes into more detail about the licenses, and has links through to the deed for each. Please visit: CC Licenses 

The main landing page for Creative Commons can be found here: CC landing page

Coventry University has produced an excellent guide to Creative Commons which you can download from here: Copyright and the Creative Commons

Tin Eye

Reverse image searches

If you wish to use an image and the rights holder/copyright is is not clear, you can upload the image to a site to check where it is being used and who owns the rights. A very popular site for this is TinEye. Click into the image to access the site