Copyright licenses

We ask that you assign a copyright license for every media file you publish on Ourmedia, so that the world knows how your work may be used.

You’ll be able to do so through the simple options in the SpinXpress publishing tool or on the upload my media pages.

We generally recommend choosing a Creative Commons license, which lets you keep your copyright but allows people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit – and only under the conditions you specify.

Here are all the licensing options available to you:

Creative Commons

Under a Creative Commons license, you retain your copyright but fine-tune it so that others may know how they may (or may not) use your work.

You have the option to allow commercial uses of your work (or not), and to allow modifications of your work (or not). As a general rule, others are required to attribute you if they share or reuse your work.

See the full range of Creative Commons licenses here. If you prefer a step-by-step process, click here. (This is only to help you decide on a license; you must choose the license you'll use as part of the upload process.)

Creative Commons Sampling

Sampling allows others to use pieces of your work but prohibits use of the entire work. Again, you may fine-tune your rights to allow others to transform segments of your work (for commercial or non-commercial purposes) or to share the entire work with others for non-commercial purposes.

Sampling can apply to music, audio, video or images. See the Sampling options process here.

Public domain

You may contribute all rights to your work to the public domain, which means that anyone — individuals, organizations, corporations — may use it for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. (If so, society thanks you for your contribution to the public commons.) If you choose this course, please make sure that you own all the rights to your work. For instance, you may not be able to contribute images of recognizable figures to the public domain without their consent.

You can read more about public domain contributions here.

Traditional copyright

Traditional copyright does not work well on the Internet, where it is a violation of law every time someone passes a copy of your file to a friend without your permission. Creative Commons licenses specify online usage rights in ways that traditional copyright fails to do.

If you choose this option, you understand that Ourmedia will post your file on a public Web site and you recognize that others may access, view, copy, store or redistribute your work.

Read more about copyright at the U.S. government's Copyright Office Web site.

Other licensing options

There are a multitude of additional copyright licenses you may choose, such as the GNU Public License, often selected for donations of software or game code; the Mozilla Public License; the Netscape Public License, and others. Just add your preferred license in the "copyright statement" field when uploading your work.

up