One goal of Creative Commons is to increase the amount of openly licensed creativity in “the commons” — the body of work freely available for legal use, sharing, repurposing, and remixing. Through the use of CC licenses, millions of people around the world have made their photos, videos, writing, music, and other creative content available for any member of the public to use.

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Search the Commons

Visit Openverse to find CC-licensed and public domain content via search services provided by other independent organizations.

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Attributing Sources

You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here is an example of an ideal attribution of a CC-licensed image by Flickr user Lukas Schlagenhauf:

“Furggelen afterglow” by Lukas Schlagenhauf is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0. 

This is an ideal attribution because it includes the:

• Title: “Furggelen afterglow”
• Author: “Lukas Schlagenhauf“—with a link to their profile page
• Source: “Furggelen afterglow“—with a link to the original photo on Flickr
• License: “CC BY-ND 2.0”—with a link to the license deed

How you attribute authors of the CC works will depend on whether you modify the content, if you create a derivative, if there are multiple sources, etc.

If you need more help, we’ve outlined the best practices for attribution on the CC Wiki.