Last week, I shared an alternative to copyright that can protect your work while allowing you to share it widely.

It's called Creative Commons and it’s been a trusted option for over 20 years.

Creative Commons is an important option if you want to share and profit from your intellectual property (IP).

Today we dig deeper into details to keep your Visual IP protected, on your terms.

Creative Commons or traditional copyright?

When it comes to protecting and sharing your intellectual property, which should you choose?
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Creative Commons (CC) is a spectrum of copyright permissions that bridges the gap between full copyright and the public domain.

While it offers many benefits, it’s not suitable for all situations.

✅ The pros: Creative Commons licensing lets you balance protection with exposure. It

• is useful for solopreneurs looking to build their brand and gain visibility for their work
• ensures your work is recognized and respected while still reaching the widest possible audience
• can save you the hassle and expense of managing individual copyright permissions

❌ The cons: Avoid Creative Commons licensing if

• maintaining control over how your work is used is crucial for its commercial value
• the uniqueness of your work is its key selling point
• you create content you intend to modify and sell in the future

How to use a Creative Commons license

There are six main Creative Commons licenses, each with different permission levels. (A seventh option, CC0, is for work you want to place in the worldwide public domain, giving up all rights.)

The image above illustrates the spectrum, running from the most permissive (public domain, top) to all rights reserved (traditional copyright, bottom). On the left side are the permitted use cases, and on the right side are the CC license components and icons.

The qualities you can restrict (and their CC license codes) are:

• BY: Credit must be given to the creator
• SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms (SA = shared alike)
• NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
• ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted (no remixing)

Each license allows or restricts these sharing permissions.

Which license to choose?

Now, while it’s easy to implement a Creative Commons license, choosing which one may be a bit challenging.

All the variations can be a bit confusing at first. What’s most important is to think through your use cases for your IP.

This 2-minute video from the University of Guelph McLaughlin Library in Canada also explains the various permissions in straightforward language and uses.

An extra benefit for solopreneurs

Whether on your website, in a digital file, or alongside published content, your CC icon badge communicates the allowed uses of your creations, protecting your rights while promoting sharing.

But there's another incredible benefit. 👇

Fulfilling the founders’ vision to unlock shared knowledge and culture, the Creative Commons search portal features millions of images you can share, use, and remix. Videos, music, 3D models, media files, and more await your creative inspiration. The University of Michigan has also put together a guide to CC-licensed materials.

My experience with both © and CC

I’ve used traditional copyright for material I want to hold close, such as my books, ebooks, and other IP I don't want modified or diluted.

I’ve also chosen Creative Commons licensing for frameworks and tools that I want to contribute to the intellectual commons, so they will be used widely by many different audiences.

For example, my Creative Canvas is a free planning and thinking tool for creative projects that builds upon the Business Model Canvas, which is also licensed under Creative Commons.

I licensed it under CC BY-NC-SA, which means that credit must be given to me as the creator (BY), it cannot be used for commercial purposes (NC), and adaptations must be shared under the same terms (SA).

No do-overs!

Choose your license carefully. You want to give your decision some thought since once your material is shared, you cannot revoke your CC license.

Monitor your work

There's a final step to licensing (which also applies to traditional copyright) — it’s wise to monitor your work.

Tools like Google Alerts and TinEye reverse image search can help you track where and how your work is being used online.

Plus, it can lead to unexpected connections and opportunities as you discover who values and uses your creations.

I hope this deep dive into Creative Commons guides you in your decisions for your Visual IP. Just remember, I’m not an attorney, and this overview is not to be taken as legal advice. Everyone’s needs are different, so be sure to check with your own legal experts when choosing important IP protection.

❤️ My favorite visual delights

Here are this week’s gems from around the Web to help you build visibility, credibility, and authority:

🗞️ Newsletter Landing Page Library​
Louis Nicholls of Grow My Newsletter has compiled a library of 300+ newsletter landing pages, complete with conversion rates and links to live sites. It’s an incredible resource for inspiration and to improve your own efforts.

🤫 The 3 Secrets to Font Pairing
​Choosing which fonts work best together is one of the biggest puzzles in visual communication. Who better to offer a straightforward approach than the folks at Adobe? This article walks you through the maze, and includes many font pair examples.

🛰️ A 15 billion-mile phone call home​
While not directly about visual communication, here’s a salute to the creative persistence of the 47-year old Voyager 1 and its guiding team of NASA scientists. The spacecraft, launched in 1977 (!) is the furthest human-made object from earth — more than 15 billion miles away, far beyond our solar system. These days it takes 22.5 hours to send signals each way, and the science team recently succeeded in reprogramming the onboard computer after a chip failure. So, amazingly, it’s still sending updates on its explorations. (And yes, Voyager 1 is the craft carrying the 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph record, the Golden Record, of images and sounds of Earth put together by Carl Sagan.) This article shares the excitement of reconnecting with this trusty space scout.

Thanks again for being a SOLO reader and coming along on this journey of visual exploration.
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See you next week,