Creative Commons (CC) is an organization that provides free legal licenses. Anyone can apply a CC license to his or her creative work, which provides more flexibility in how those works can be legally used by others.

For your video project, using CC-licensed materials is a legal way to use creative works by others, without violating copyright law.

More quick facts about CC are on this flyer.

Resources for help with creating & editing your podcast:

Copyright or Creative Commons?
Copyright law heavily protects works that are highly creative in nature -- like music, images, and movies. More and more artists are choosing to license their work in the Creative Commons, and depending on the CC license they choose, their work may be available for you to use as part of your video.

But my podcast is a school project, so isn't it considered fair use?
Not necessarily! Fair Use is a complicated concept that doesn't always apply. In this case, you will be openly sharing your podcast by publishing it online in Sound Ideas, which means that if you include copyrighted or licensed music and audio in your podcast you must have permission to do so from the copyright/license holder.

How do I get permission from the copyright or license holder?
The good news is that Creative Commons makes it possible for you to find works that are already licensed for you to use freely in your podcasts. You just have to make sure that the CC license you find allows the use that you want, and that you comply with the terms of the license.

Comply with the terms of the license? That sounds scary.
It's not really -- every CC license tells you what you can and cannot do with a particular work. For example, if you use music with an "Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike" license, that means that your podcast must include credit to the musician; be non-commercial in purpose; and that you license your own podcast under the same "Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike" license. Some works that you find will require attribution only; other works may be dedicated to the public domain and free for any kind of use you want. It all depends on the CC license and on the individual work, so make sure you check the CC license on a case-by-case basis. If you're not sure what a CC license allows you to do, consult the CC licenses or check with Ben Tucker.

No derivs? What's that about?
"No derivs" is CC shorthand for "No Derivative Works" -- it means that you are only allowed to use the work in its original, complete form and you cannot transform it. And, as the CC guide linked above explains, adding music to a podcast counts as a "transformative" work (even if you're not remixing or editing the music itself!) Long story short: A "no derivs" CC license means it's off-limits for your podcast project.