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Hope Library Guides

Using Multimedia Legally: A Guide to Finding and Using Multimedia in Digital Projects: Creative Commons Licenses

This guide provides a brief overview of how to find and locate multimedia for projects that can be used legally in educational class projects.

Creative Commons Copyright

Creative Commons Licenses were created to make copyright of multimedia relatively easy to understand.  Creative Commons licenses are used by a variety of sites, including Flickr, Youtube, and Wikipedia for their multimedia.  If you see any form of a Creative Commons license, you are allowed to embed the media file as long as you give credit to the creator.  The licenses will specify other restrictions on uses for the media, such as commercial use, sharing, and modficiations.   Below are explanations of licensing types and of creative commons licenses.

Licensing Types

This is an image of the creative commons copy right symbol "attribution (by)"

  • Original creator of the multimedia item must be given credit for the creation of the original item.
  • Permission must be granted from the original creator to not give them credit

 

This is an image of the creative commons copy right symbol "ShareAlike (sa)"

  • Original creator of the multimedia item must be given credit for the creation of the original item.
  • Work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified
  • Permission must be granted from the original creator to not give them credit and to distribute the modified work in a different way

 

This is the creative commons copy right symbol for "Noncommercial (nc)"

  • Original creator of the multimedia item must be given credit for the creation of the original item.
  • Work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified 
  • Work cannot be used for commercial purposes
  • Permission must be granted from the original creator to not give them credit and to distribute the modified work in a different way

 

This is the creative commons copy right license for "No Derivatives (nd)"

  • Original creator of the multimedia item must be given credit for the creation of the original item.
  • Work can be copied, distributed, displayed, and performed but NOT modified
  • Work cannot be used for commercial purposes
  • Permission must be granted from the original creator to not give them credit and to modify the work in any way

Resources

“About The Licenses.” Creative Commons. Accessed October 3, 2016. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

“Licensing Types.” Creative Commons. Accessed October 3, 2016. https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/. 

Possible Licenses

The Creative Commons Licensing types found in the other tab are combined into creative commons licenses that look like the below images.  These licensing types are combined into one single license.  The possibilities are listed below and explained:

 

This image is of a creative commons license for "attribution CC BY"

BY

  • Original Creator of the work must be given credit for any use of the work
  • Work can be copied, modified, and used in any way -- including for commercial purposes

 

This image is of a creative commons license for "Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA"

BY

  • Original Creator of the work must be given credit for any use of the work
  • Work can be copied, modified, and used in any way -- including for commercial purposes

SA

  • Work must be under the same agreement as the original work

This image is of a creative commons license for "Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND"

BY

  • Original Creator of the work must be given credit for any use of the work
  • Work can be copied, and used in most ways without altering the multimedia
  • Work can be used for commercial purposes

ND

  • Work cannot be modified -- must be "unchanged" and "in whole"

 

This image is of a creative commons license for "Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC"

BY

  • Original Creator of the work must be given credit for any use of the work
  • Work can be copied, modified, and used in any way 

NC

  • Work cannot be used for commercial purposes

 

This image is of a creative commons license for "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA"

BY

  • Original Creator of the work must be given credit for any use of the work
  • Work can be copied, modified, and used in any way 

NC

  • Work cannot be used for commercial purposes

SA

  • Work must be under the same agreement as the original work

 

This image is of a creative commons license for "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND"

BY

  • Original Creator of the work must be given credit for any use of the work
  • Work can be copied, and used in most ways without altering the multimedia

NC

  • Work cannot be used for commercial purposes

ND

  • Work cannot be modified -- must be "unchanged" and "in whole"