You don’t want copyright law problems, you don’t want YouTube knocking on your door saying copyright strike special delivery. What you want to be able to do is use others video clips in your own video clips without copyright law problems.
In today’s article we’ll answer the question “Can I use creative commons videos in my own videos without getting a copyright strike?”
Know all about Creative Commons
Copyright strikes are a terrifying thing for your YouTube channel. If you get three pending strikes well then your channel will be terminated, all your videos will be removed and you can’t get around it by starting a new YouTube channel.
I know why you’re turning to creative commons videos clips to be able to use those in your own videos and not get a copyright strike but what is creative commons?
Creative Commons is a california non-profit that strives to help artists share their work without losing their copyrights by the same token it wants to help other artists use original content and not get sued for copyright infringement.
I’m amazed that creativecommons.org actually exists after all they don’t charge a single thing for their service.
What's the service of Creative Commons?
Well, they hired lawyers to draft six different type of licenses, those licenses can be accessed by creators who want to share their work on the creative commons system. You just go to creativecommons.org, you answer a few questions and then the name of a particular license pops up.
You can actually review that license and then you tell the world that you’re sharing your work on that particular license by publishing the name of it with your work of art so if you’re a video creator you might put the name of the creative commons license that you want to choose in the description section.
Before I get to whether or not you can legally use creative commons video clips in your own video clips I want to make sure you understand how to access creative commons videos on YouTube?
How to access Creative Commons Videos on YouTube?
The easiest way that I’ve found is to go to the YouTube search bar and then to enter in the name of the person or the topic that you want to search, then put a comma and write creative commons with no space between as shown in the image below.
Another way that you can use to be able to get creative commons videos on YouTube is to search the particular topic that you have and then click on the filter button that’s right beneath the search bar and then you click on creative commons and then it will provide you a search results for the topic you’re searching with only creative commons license videos.
Can I use a creative commons video in my own video?
All right we spent a little bit of time on the background of creative commons. Now I know you have the question can I use a creative commons video in my own video and not get in trouble with copyright strikes.
The answer is YES.
But you have to use the creative commons license videos according to the terms and conditions of the particular creative commons video license that was selected by the original creator.
All right now we’re going to get into a little bit more detail, while you can be confident that any video that’s designated as creative commons on YouTube can be reused by you in your own videos; you have to be prepared for the possibility that later in time some person that designated as creative commons could come back at you and say you’re not using that particular video clip the way I’ve wanted it used when i designated the creative commons license.
So for example you may use a video clip for a commercial purpose like an ad or an infomercial later on in time someone could come back and say, “Hey listen that video clip was designated for non-commercial uses, I want you to take it down.”
So we always say that if you’re going to use a creative commons video just be prepared for the fact that it could come back to haunt you. It doesn’t happen very often most artists who designate their videos as creative commons really don’t mind if it’s shared with anybody and everybody.
However, I just want to make sure you knew that just by using video that’s designated as creative commons doesn’t give you an unfettered license to use it in any method for any matter possible.
One more thing to remember is that all creative commons videos share the requirement of attribution that means that if you use a creative commons video clip in your own video clip you must cite to the original creator in your description section.
Here’s an example of how you cite how you attribute an original creative commons video clip in your own video in your description section.
We’ve been talking a lot about creative commons and copyright strikes which brings to mind fair use did you know you could use the fair use doctrine to defend yourself against a copyright strike if you want to learn more about fair use read here.
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Sunil @digitalsunilsah is the founder of Prettywings Digital. He is a Digital Marketer, YouTuber and Ecommerce Seller. He is very passionate digital entrepreneur who loves blogging on Digital Marketing and eCommerce. Learn Ecommerce on Ecomsprint. Follow Sunil Kumar Sah on Social Media:
