Licences define usage rights for a work – whether that work is an image, a piece of music, or a video. Misuse of works and a refusal to follow terms of use can have severe consequences and should be avoided under all circumstances.
Free licences offer public users some room to manoeuvre. An image published under the terms of a free licence is known as ‘free’, or ‘licence-free’. But the term ‘licence-free image’ is a bit misleading, because these images are still under licence – just what’s known as a free licence. But in everyday semantics, these images have simply come to be known as ‘free’.
The most commonly used free licences are from Creative Commons (CC). This charitable organisation offers seven different CC licences: the ideal one to come across on an image search is the CC0 licence, since it includes no restrictions whatsoever on usage. CC0 images may be used commercially, edited partially or fully, and redistributed, even without crediting the original author. For more information on the different forms of CC licence, please see our article on Creative Commons.