Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons Licensing for Educators

Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work–on conditions of your choice. A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that they have created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of his/her own work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

Find Creative Commons-licensed work to incorporate into your courses / online materials

Flickr Commons is a collaborative project that allows cultural heritage organizations, such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and several dozen other museums and archives, to make their materials more easily discovered. Through the Flickr Commons, those organizations get direct feedback from the public about their materials, as well. All images are published with "no known copyright" restrictions and are part of the public domain.

Contains free high resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for either corporate or public use. The site's purpose is to provide free image reference material for illustrators, comic book artist, designers, teachers and all creative pursuits. The current license allows for use and remixing without attribution, but prohibits you from selling the images or claiming ownership.

Openly licensed music.