Image Copyright : Creative Commons

“Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal tools.”

It is a system that allows creators to make their work available for certain purposes, while the users are not required to ask for permission, but have to follow the Creative Commons conditions for the particular work.

Creative Commons (CC) licenses use the approach “Some rights reserved” instead of the restrictive “All rights reserved.” The CC licenses allow the authors to set conditions for the distribution of their original work. Such licenses are used on websites like Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube, Vimeo, and Bandcamp, with over 1.4 billion works.

Anyone can freely choose from the six CC licenses and clearly determine the parameters for use of their work. Each license has a badge that the author should add to their work to display the license category and the conditions for use.

Example:

Webinar by Nick Youngson, published by Alpha Stock Images, licensed under Creative Commons 3 - CC BY-SA 3.0

To cite an image you should note the following:

- title/or keywords if title is not available + year

- author + link to author's website/profile page

- source/publisher + link to publisher's website

- license under which the image is published + link to the CC license terms

More information on attributing CC resources

CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution):

The work can be shared, used and modified, but the only requirement is to give attribution to the creator.

CC BY-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives):

The work can be shared and used, but no modifications are allowed and the author should be attributed.

CC BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike):

The work can be shared, used and modified, as long as the author is attributed, the use of the material is for non-commercial purposes and the new work is shared with the same license type.

CC0 (Creative Commons Zero):

The work is released in the public domain.

The CC licenses are regularly updated, thus when attributing a resource is better to include the license release number (e.g. Creative Commons 4.0) and a link to the relevant CC license terms.

CC BY-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike):

The work can be shared, used and modified, as long as the author is attributed and the new work is shared with the same license type.

CC BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial):

The work can be shared, used and modified, as long as the author is attributed and the use of the material is for non-commercial purposes.

CC BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives):

The work can be shared for non-commercial use with attribution to the original author, but no modifications are allowed.

If the user does not adhere to the CC license terms of the work, its copyrights are infringed and the use of the work is unlicensed. However, the Creative Commons 4.0 (or above) are granted a 30-day grace period in which they can resolve breaches of license terms, before it is considered copyright infringement. Otherwise, legal action can be taken against the offending party.