Let’s face it.  Times are tough, and even though you may want the services of a professional photographer or copywriter, you may not have the budget to commission one.

So, where can you turn if you need to cheaply, legally, and ethically obtain images, videos, and other content for your website?

One answer is the Creative Commons

The Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig in an effort to make information more accessible while preserving the rights of the creator.

To do this the Creative Commons has developed a number of standard licenses with some rights reserved.

Material produced under a Creative Commons license can be duplicated and used elsewhere though some restrictions may apply.

How can I find Creative Commons works?

The Creative Commons website maintains a directory of websites where all contributors agree to use Creative Commons licenses.

Alternately, you can add the words “cc license” to any Google search to increase the odds of your finding material on another website that you may legally add to your own.  However, when using this approach you should still be sure to check for an indicator that a Creative Commons license is actually being used.

So, how can you tell when a document is licensed with the Creative Commons?

Any page containing material available under a Creative Commons License will have an icon or some text indicating this to be the case.  Lets take, for example, the WikiHow article on keeping goldfish happy and healthy (a site I found by entering “goldfish cc license” into Google).

If you scroll to he bottom left corner of the page, you will see a rectangular icon and a disclaimer that the material of the page is available under a Creative Commons License.  If you click on the icon, it will link you to the full text of the license being used on that site.

Some restrictions may apply

There are a number of short two letter abbreviations that may appear along with the license that indicate some of the restrictions that apply to the duplication of the content.

BY - the Attribution restriction.  If a License appears with the BY abbreviation, it means that you must give the original artist or author credit in order to use their work in any way.  Newer versions of the CC License automatically include this restriction regardless of whether or not the letters “BY” appear.

SA - the Share Alike restriction.  If you use material produced under an SA license, you must apply the same license to the result.  This means you should be very careful about mixing original content with content produced under a SA restricted license because you may lose control of the original elements.

ND - the No Derivative restriction.  Any material produced under an ND license must be used as-is.  No modification of any sort is allowed.

NC - the Non-Commercial restriction.  Any material produced under an NC license cannot be reproduced for commercial purposes.  This makes it a very important restriction for a business owner, as an NC restriction essentially means that the material is off limits to you unless you receive specific permission from the owner of the license.

So long as you abide by the terms of the relevant CC license, you may freely use content from these websites on your own.