Creative Commons is a non-profit company dedicated to providing flexible and free-to-apply copyright licences that go beyond the standard “all rights reserved”. Rather, media (of almost any kind), can have a licence attached that indicates how the owner of the content would like it used: Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commerical and No Derivative Works. For the purposes of this document, CC licenses are an indication to the user that the content can be used, subject to the licence, in their works.

The details of the licenses are important, and are worth noting, and I’ve included the bare minimum of each after the jump. Creative Commons has an extensive FAQ which will help you pick through the details. If you are an educational user, not planning to make money off of your use of CC media, you can use CC media freely, and that’s the beauty of it.

Searching for CC-licenced content

Creative Commons Search
CC has a page that compiles websites that allow the user to limit their searches to CC-licensed content.

Images

Flickr.com
Under advanced search, toggle the ‘Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content’.
Note that the advanced settings in Yahoo Image search for CC also search Flickr.

MultiColr
An alternative to Flickr’s search interface, MultiColr allows you to find CC images by colour.

CompFight
Another way to search Flickr, with obvious CC settings next to the search box (set to CC ‘only’).

FlickrCC
Search only CC images in Flickr quickly, by thumbnail

Google Image Search
Under advanced search, find the Usage Rights drop-down menu, and choose a license.

Sound and Music

SoundCloud
Toggled in the advanced search.

Jamendo
“Jamendo is a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.”

ccMixter
“ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.”

Video

Blip.tv
After searching or browsing for videos, toggle ‘options’, and filter by ‘license’.

Multimedia

Wikimedia Commons
Includes images, sound and video that are ‘free to use’.

More!

The above websites are just a sampling of what is out there. There are hundreds of websites with CC-licensed content.

Creative Commons wiki: Content Directories

SitePoint: 30+ Places to find CC Content

The CC Licenses

from http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

I’ve hijacked this post to re-render it as a running list of Andrew-approved™ list of quality podcasts.

• Spark (Digital Culture, Internet, Technology)

• Search Engine (Internet, Open Access, Copyright)

• This American Life (Society, Humour)

• Planet Money (Economics)

• RadioLab (Science, Society)

• Risk (Humour, Secrets, Society)

• Quirks and Quarks (Science)

• A Life Well Wasted (Video Game Culture)

• All Songs Considered (Music)

• On the Media (Media)

• Sound Opinions (Music Talk, Reviews)

• Fresh Air (Society, News, Interviews)

• Wiretap (Humour)

• White Coat, Black Art (Practice of Medicine)

• The Sound of Young America (Interviews, Humour)