A License is the permission that the person who holds the copyright provides to allow others to to use, copy, or change a copyrighted work. You can think of it in terms of physical property, if you want, the copyright is like the “title” to a house. It says you own the house. If you want, you can rent the house out to someone, and that rental agreement is the ‘license’.

Even though everyone has the right to require that others respect their copyright and ask permission to use their work, many persons and organizations choose to license their content more freely in the Internet. They do this by giving their work a Creative Commons license or by placing their work in the Public Domain When re-using images and content from the web, always check, you may want to use Public Domain and Creative Commons-licensed content.

Copyright applies to the things you create too. You own the original content (photos, etc.) that you post on your blog or social media account. Social media, like Facebook, 𝕏, and Pinterest, allow online posting of material that may be copyrighted. The social media site does not own the work that has been posted on their site; the copyright is still retained by the owner. But by agreeing to post works on the site, you sign an agreement that gives the site a license to use the work. In these cases, the license is given without payment.

Licensing agreements can be found in the terms and conditions you agree to when you first join a social media platform. eg.

𝕏

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Facebook

You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License).

Creative Commons is the name of a nonprofit corporation that makes it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. The organization provides a set of free licenses (and other legal tools) to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, or use commercially other people’s work, including literature, music and photography.

A Creative Commons license provides a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators, and a range of options regarding the kind of rights they wish to maintain or give away. Choices include:

• Attribution: You must credit the creator in order to use, copy, or share the content.
• Non Commercial: You can’t make a profit from the content.
• No Derivative Works: You can’t change the content.
• Share Alike: You can change the content, but you have to let other people use your new work with the same license as the original. In other words, you can’t treat any Share Alike work you adapt as your own copyright, even if you radically change it.

To determine if a piece of content that you find on the web and want to use, is Creative Commons, look for the Creative Commons symbol, as well as symbols that indicate exactly which licenses apply to it. For instance, an image with this symbol has three licenses: Attribution, Non Commercial, and No Derivative Works. This means you can use this photo if you credit the person who created it, don’t make money from it, and don’t change it.

Here are some sites for finding Creative Commons content:

• Wikimedia Commons
• Flickr’s Creative Commons Search
• Creative Commons Search