Why RM Media Ltd Uses Creative Commons Licenses

Why RM Media Ltd Uses Creative Commons Licenses

12th May 2018 Uncategorised 0

Every month tens of thousands of people use our images to add meaning, interest and value to their website or other marketing material.  There are nearly 2,000,000 of our images in use on the internet.

Our image library consist of more than 30,000 images.   A portion of these images can be licensed by either paying a modest price or complying with a Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0) license.  

We are proud to make some of our images available via a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.   The link required as a condition to use our images provides us significant value because backlinks to our websites help our websites perform well in search engines.    The required attribution also helps build our brand and increases the use of our images.

Of course, it also makes us feel good to share.   The CC BY-SA 3.0 license makes our images available to those who cannot or would rather not pay money to use them.   The CC BY-SA 3.0 license also allows users to improve or modify our images to meet their individual needs.

The CC BY-SA 3.0 license is a simple industry standard license that is clearly summarised in 56 words (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).   Our labelling of our images as CC BY-SA 3.0 is clear with each page containing six or more references to the license and attribution requirements. As a result, our images have been properly licensed millions of times.   

Making intellectual property available via a Creative Commons license is something that government and courts encourage.  Every country and court that has addressed the issue has confirmed that offering a Creative Commons license does not diminish the copyright owner’s right to protect their property.  

Despite the clarity and simplicity of the licensing requirements, a small percentage of users choose to not comply with our licensing requirements. Just like any other copyright holder or business, we must take steps to protect our business and intellectual property.

Accordingly, we do enforce our copyrights against some users who do not properly license our images.  Historically, we have only initiated enforcement against those businesses who do not license the image and then use our images to make a profit.  While we have been forced to file lawsuits, we only do so after making several attempts to resolve the matter outside of court. We have never knowingly pursued claims against those who have used our images for personal, non-commercial projects.  

We are very proud and grateful for all those who properly licensed our images.   The proper licensing allows us to continue to create new and highly useful images.  We look forward to continuing to make many of our wildly popular images available via a CC BY-SA 3.0 license, and, hopefully, providing inspiration for more creators to do the same.

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