There are quite a few different ways to license works today and it can be confusing when you want to use something produced by someone else. Hopefully after reading this article you'll be able to make an informed decision about what is or isn't allowed. This can be a very important lesson if you do any kind of multimedia work ranging from web page design to music creation. You don't want to end up on the wrong side of a copyright lawsuit for using something you thought was copyright free.

The major licenses that you should be concerned about are public domain, creative commons, royalty based, and copyrighted. Public domain means that a particular piece of media is free to use in any way you would like since it is owned by the public. Something will fall into this category if it was produced by a government agency or was specifically released as such when it was created. Creative commons can be a variety of different things as it is intended to be a flexible license. To understand the specific terms you'll need to read the license associated with the media you're interested in using. Royalty free simply means that once it is payed for you are free to do what you would like with the work but there is an initial fee that must be paid to use it. Last and probably most familiar is a regular copyright which means you are not able to do anything with the work outside of "fair use" without getting permission.

Fair use is a set of exceptions to using copyrighted materials that allows their use for parody or other very specific uses. It takes into account the entirety of the work compared to what was used, if you're profiting off the use, if your use harms the copyright in anyway, etc, etc. You should look this up if you would like to know more about it.