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Using Information Ethically and Legally

Using and creating content that is both ethical and compliant with copyright law

Open Licensed Content

Creative Commons Licenses

  • The six types of Creative Commons licenses, linked above, give intellectual property holders the protection that comes with having a copyright on content while also giving them the flexibility to determine how they would like their work to be used by others. Most commonly, works with Creative Commons licenses will allow their work to be reused for other purposes as long as the copyright holder is attributed.
  • Content licensed under Creative Commons licenses is some of the safest to reuse and adapt since the type of license is always clearly stated and the rules for each license are simple and easy to understand. 
  • Although there are other open licensing organizations, including The Free Software Foundation and The Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons is the most widely-adopted type of open licensing. Individuals can also create their own open licenses, but using the system Creative Commons has set up is most common.

Open Licensed Images

Creative Commons licenses can be applied to images as well as to text content. When looking to include images in your work, make sure that not only is it open licensed and able to be reproduced, but also that you are including alt text to make the image accessible to all of your viewers. Alt text is what screen reading software reads out in place of images and is also what appears when an image will not load for a user on a very slow connection. 

Open Licensed Sounds

Sound recordings that have been published with an open license are more difficult to find than images, but there are still sounds, speech recordings, and even songs that are available to content creators for free. When including sound in your work, make sure to also provide captions or a transcript of the sound for those who are unable to listen.