Creative Commons – Free Use for Private and Commercial Purposes

Creative Commons is a license model for which users do not have to pay any fees to the author. Unlike normal copyright and license laws, where royalties are paid to authors, these authors provide content free of charge under Creative Commons License.

Differences in Creative Commons

Creative Commons licenses also differ in their content. Whether you want to use a photo, a video, or a piece of software code, the creators can specify under which category they want to publish their work. On the one hand there is the possibility of naming the author, on the other hand the complete release for use. One of the most famous Creative Commons projects in the field of software is used by millions of bloggers and agencies as well as online shops, WordPress. Many developers around the world work on this system free of charge, and they continue to work on it day after day. None of these authors claim to be named. Everyone may use the software freely, for private and commercial use.

Private and commercial use of Creative Commons Media

Also in the private and in the commercial use the rights of use of Creative Commons media differ. Some authors only make their work available for private use, commercial use, i.e. in the commercial sense, still has to be paid for. Other authors, as in the above example of WordPress, provide their services completely free of charge. So that anyone, private person or company may use it.

Legal traps for Creative Commons

Many blogs need a lot of image material, so many use image databases that offer photos under Creative Common License. However, this can have legal consequences, because nobody checks who uploaded the content to the platforms. That doesn’t necessarily have to be the author of the photo. If you then use one of these photos offered under Creative Commons as a website, you are threatened with a warning and depending on the size of the company and the country of the author, this can be very high, so that small companies quickly become a stumbling block.

Creative Commons and Copyright

What does Creative Commons mean?

• Creative Commons is a model from the license law where no fees have to be paid to the author or originator
• Creators make their content available free of charge under Creative Commons
• There is the possibility of naming the author, but also the full release for use
• Example: WordPress, many developers worldwide are working on this software, but none of the authors claims to be named
• Beware! There are also legal traps with Creative Commons, in image databases it is not checked whether the user who uploads the content to the platform is also the author, when using these photos threaten a warning