Once you have found some interesting open content, consider the method by which you plan to change, combine, alter and repurpose it. Some approaches are provided in the remix generator below but we suggest you embrace experimentation and consider any approach if it provides you with interesting results.
Copyright
When you are using images that are not owned by you, make sure you don’t violate their copyright. (Just because something is ‘on the Internet’, does not mean that you can use it…). Always check the licence details of any work you find in a given repository. Also, if you receive an image directly from its author or copyright holder, make sure you clarify what the conditions of it’s use are: i.e. what you can and can’t do with it (e.g. Can you use it for educational purposes? Can you include it in a book you’re planning to sell? Can you crop the image? Can you use the image as part of a new montage?)
There are several so-called open licences that are considered ‘safe’, in the sense that they leave you lots of freedom with regard to how to us them. As a rule of thumb, it is safest to use artefacts that are marked as being ‘in the public domain’ (sometimes marked as CC0) and ‘no known copyright restrictions’. You can freely build upon, enhance and reuse them for any purposes.
There are a number of Creative Commons (CC) licences that aim to strike the right balance between permissions and rights: read the letters attached to them carefully, and follow the explanations on the CC website, to see what you can and can’t do with each work (some allow you to do anything as long as you acknowledge the original author; others allow you to use the works for non-commercial purposes only; some allow you to modify the work, others don’t, etc. etc.).
Two of the most useful CC licences are:
Attribution CC BY This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Attribution ShareAlike CC BY-SA This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to ‘copyleft’ free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
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