Everything that is Creative Commons is free, right? Uhhh, nope.
This is a great article listing the different licenses that fall under Creative Commons licenses while also highlighting the BIGGEST pitfall of them all: What happens when someone (not the copyright owner) uploads a picture of a copyrighted material to a Creative Commons-license site (like Flickr)?
This stuff is real. I know someone who helped design a website recently. They used an image from Wikimedia Commons, a site for free images to use, and then the website owner received a letter from an IP Attorney demanding payment for use of a copyrighted image on a commercial website. Then what do you do? I highly doubt Wikimedia is going to help.
In this day and age, it is both difficult to get good images that fit your needs, but also easy to snap your own pictures from your phone. When in doubt, it is safest to pay to license an image, hire someone to take a picture for you, or take one yourself. As they say, “Nothing in life is free.” Except for advice. And like mine, who knows if it is worth taking. And usually people giving advice just want to talk, and then you have to listen to them drone on and — I digress.
PS Featured AI Generated Image “Creative Commons” prompt is brought to you by “still can’t do faces or hands”, one chair tow chair wait is that person floating?! and everyone’s neatly organized who knows what in front of them. We also love that one side there are chairs and table legs and then the other side is an MC Escher illusion where they are both sitting on the floor and are under the … table top?
