Creative Commons Licenses
Photography is a big part of the TravelMuse site. We make a great effort to find interesting and intriguing images to accompany our articles, and have been lucky to find many stunning images that are available for use, thanks to the photographers that share their images under Creative Commons licenses on Flickr, the source for many of our photographs.
As one of the largest photo-sharing sites on the Web, Flickr has made it easier for photographers to get their work seen. Creative Commons licensing provides a simple and customizable way for photographers to control the usage of their images, while retaining their copyrights. Now that Flickr offers users the option of releasing their images under CC licenses images can be freely shared on a large scale, and new and unknown photographers can gain exposure.
When we notify the photographers whose work we have chosen that their images are going to be published, we often get very positive and enthusiastic responses. We have received many e-mails from Flickr users who were thrilled to see their images on our site, thanking us for choosing them. We should be thanking them (and do, every time we use an image) because without their participation in the Creative Commons community, the TravelMuse site would not have the wealth of beautiful images it does.
Understanding Creative Commons
There are several different options for how to license your work through Creative Commons, but I’m only going to discuss the options that pertain to photographs.
Attribution (by) License
The least restrictive license you can choose is the Attribution (by) license, which requires the user to give credit to the person that created it. Under this license users are free to “distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.” Most of the images on the TravelMuse site are licensed under CC ‘by’ licenses, as these are the only images we can use without first asking for special permission from the photographer.
Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) License
The Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) license allows users all of the same liberties as the Attribution license, but has the additional clause that requires the user to license any work they create with your work under the same license. So, if someone uses one of your Attribution Share Alike licensed images in a collage, or as cover art for their album, they’re required to release the entire work under a CC Attribution Share Alike license. This license ensures that the amount of work available under Creative Commons licenses will continue to grow, creating more opportunities for creativity. While ensuring that works remain available and in circulation, this clause also prevents magazines and periodicals with copyrighted articles (both print and online) from using them on their pages, since they’d lose the copyright to their content, which is why TravelMuse can’t use images under this license.
When we find images with Share Alike licenses that we feel would be great on the site, we contact the photographer and ask permission to disregard that clause. Many photographers have been happy to let us use them under an Attribution only license, but it has become clear to us, after several photographers have expressed surprise that we were asking permission, that many people don’t understand or realize the conditions of the clause.
Attribution No Derivatives
The third type of Creative Commons license is the Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) license. This license allows users some of the same freedoms as the Attribution and Share Alike licenses, but stipulates that the original work cannot be altered or changed in any way. This means that despite the fact that at TravelMuse we usually do not change the images we use in any way except to crop them to fit our format, we cannot use images with ‘No Derivatives’ licenses. We certainly understand the reason for this clause, as there are definitely many things that can be done to an image to change its meaning and message. Luckily for us, as with some of the Share Alike images we have found, photographers have been happy to allow us to disregard this clause and use their images on our site.
Other types of Creative Commons licenses include Non-Commercial clauses, combined in different ways with Share Alike and No Derivatives clauses.
Photographers who are willing to share their work have made it possible for TravelMuse to feature the beautiful imagery it does. We hope that the number of images available under Creative Commons licenses continues to grow, and photographers continue to be excited about being published on the TravelMuse site. If you are a photographer, amateur or professional, feel free to let us know if you would like to share your images with us. One good way to do that is to join our Flickr group TravelMuse. We often invite Flickr users whose images we like to the group, but if we haven’t noticed your photos yet, don’t wait for an invitation! The group is open to everyone, and you can submit as many of your favorite travel photos as you want. We monitor the pool, and select images from it for publication on the TravelMuse site.
Thank you, and keep shooting!
