Creative Commons, if you are unfamiliar withthe concept, allows musicians, artists, authors, photographers, etc to license their work with either all rights reserved or some rights reserved. For example, you can use all of my photographs on Flickr, so long as you credit my work to me and cannot use it commercially without me getting compensated for it as well.

Why would I do this? Because it allows me to get exposure and payment for my work. Some of my photographs have been published in magazines and websites that otherwise would never have been used.

If you maintain a website, or display your works online, consider a commons license to protect and reward yourself. For example, the above photograph is not mine but has been downloaded thanks to MikeBlogs’ Flickr stream. Thanks, Mike!

Here is how my articles are covered:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.