Find Creative Commons Content

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is an organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to sharing works by providing a set of licenses "that give every person and organization in the world a free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; ensure proper attribution; and allow others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works." (Creative Commons)

There are a variety of types of Creative Commons licenses each of which provides content creators options for sharing their works. Some may allow any reuse and only require attribution, others, for example, may restrict use to non-commercial purposes only. Always pay close attention to the license and ensure that you follow the terms of the license when reusing a work.

The sections below are intended to help you navigate and discover various sources of public domain and creative commons content.

Creative Commons Videos

The following list provides some commons sources for creative commons video content.

Source	Description
Openverse	An extensive library of free stock photos, images, and audio, available for free use.
CC Wiki Films	Listing of Creative Commons licensed films. Includes documentaries and features.
Engage Media	Video sharing site focused on social justice issues in the Asia-Pacific area.
Internet Archive	Access to downloadable video, audio, text & multimedia in the public domain.
Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive	A collection of ephemeral films.
Ted Talks	1,900+ Ted Talk videos that can be freely shared for non-commercial purposes. A variety of languages and topics available.
Vimeo Creative Commons Videos	Hundreds of thousands of CC-licensed videos on Vimeo.
YouTube	Use search filters in YouTube to limit results to CC content.

Creative Commons or Public Domain Images

The following list provides some common sources for creative commons image content.
 

Source	Description
Openverse	An extensive library of free stock photos, images, and audio, available for free use.
Flickr	Source of images and videos. Check The Commons to locate libraries and museums that share publicly held photography collections.
Wikimedia Commons	Contains millions of freely usable images and media; and anyone can contribute.
Libraries and Archives Canada	Historical materials, including images, videos, and written texts, many of which are in the public domain.
Images Canada	A gateway site to images of Canadian events, people, places and things. All images can be reproduced, in print and/or digital format, for the non-commercial purposes.
Southwestern Ontario Digital Archive (SWODA)	Historic collection of images relating to Windsor/Detroit and Southwestern Ontario

Creative Commons Music

The following list provides some commons sources for creative commons audio content.
 

Openverse	An extensive library of free stock photos, images, and audio, available for free use.
ccMixter	This is a community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
Free Music Archive	This is a community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
Jamendo	Jamendo is a platform for independent artists wishing to share their creations as easily as possible.
Magnatune	All music files available to Magnatune members are licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa v1.0 license.
Fugue Music	Royalty-Free music.