Copyright: What is legal?

I just recently attended the VCCS Distance Education Peer Group Conference (October 15th-16th). The keynote speaker for the conference spoke to the group about Copyright and Creative Commons License. There are so many gray areas when it comes to copyright that it can be difficult to understand what you can and can't do especially online. Often when working online, we find images, video, and music that we would like to use, because it is just perfect...but did you consider copyright. Everything is copyrighted upon creation, even without the "Big C". So just because you find it online and you don't see the copyright symbol, doesn't mean you can use it without permission. Instead, look for work that uses a creative commons license.

Creative Commons is a term you may be familiar with, but did you know that there are different levels of Creative Commons? Creative Commons allows groups or individuals to make their work available for some level of use (CC). You can use it under certain conditions, usually with certain restrictions. You do have to be careful and pay attention to what type of creative commons license applies to the work you want to use. There are six primary Creative Commons licenses offered. This website provides a brief description of each. Creative Commons: About Licenses

There are many websites that offer content with creative commons licenses. In fact, the web browser Mozilla Firefox has a built in search button to look specifically for creative commons licensed material. I have provided links to a variety of resources below, and I have embedded the presenters presentation which she has available on the Slideshare website.

Search Engine for Creative Commons Licensed Material
Flickr (Isolate Creative Commons Licensed Photos through Advanced Search)
Flickr Commons (No Known Copyright Restrictions)
Life Photo Archives Hosted by Google (Personal and Non-Commercial Use)
Stockvault (Use without Attribution)
Morguefile
CCMixter (Music Creative Commons)

Digital Copyright: Cool Tools to Legally Spice Up Your Learning

View more presentations from Michelle Lentz.