Creative Commons
Creative Commons is both an organization, and a movement in response to expansive copyright protection. Using Creative Commons Licenses, artists and creators can proactively make their work available for public use, under specific conditions.
Creative Commons is not an alternative to copyright - it's just an option of a different way to share works, and it fundamentally relies on copyright - you must own a copyright in a work in order to make it available under a Creative Commons license.
Creators Control Sharing
Creative Commons Licenses allow creators to make their works available for use - and they allow creators to put conditions on those uses. One great advantage of Creative Commons licenses for creators is that they can cut down on administrative overhead for frequent approved uses of your materials. There are many universities, artists, educators and more who want to share the work they have created. Look at the list of suggested webpages on the left of the screen. Those are great places to find Creative Commons Music that you can use without permission from the artist. Make sure you play by the rules and give credit to the people who created the work you are using. It is also important to know are that there are different levels of sharing:
To see the full explanation of these terms, visit About the Licenses.
Users Get Certainty
Even in the best of circumstances, it can be difficult to be sure that a given use is acceptable under fair use or other formal copyright exemptions or limitations. Creative Commons licenses give much more certainty to your uses - if you meet the conditions of the license, your use is pre-approved.
When information, art, music, etc.. are used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC by-nc) or Attribution (CC by) license. We don't have to consider permission requests, or payment, or even have to think about fair use - we just know our use is okay!
Portions of this libguide are taken from Creative Commons Libguide by The University Of Minnesota Library available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License
While there are different levels of sharing when using something licensed by Creative Commons all licensed material has one thing in common...attribution! All Creative Commons licenses require attribution to the creator, you have to acknowledge and give them credit for their work.
How do you attribute the work you are using? A good rule of thumb is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.
Some material in the Attribution section taken from Best practices for attribution by CC Wiki licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.