I Am CC Allows Instagram Users to Share Under a Creative Commons License

Flickr’s Creative Commons licensing options allows its users to grant licenses that allow creators to make use of the photographs under a set of terms (e.g. attribution, non-commercial). Most photo sharing services have yet to bake Creative Commons licenses into their websites, but starting today, Instagram users can now release their photos under CC — albeit through a third-party solution.

It’s called I Am CC, and is a project started by LocalWiki founder Philip Neustrom that aims to “make the world a better, more creative place.”

Basically, you sign up by connecting the app with your Instagram account. Once you’re in, you’ll be presented with a form through which you agree to release your images under a CC license of your choice:

As you can see from the screenshot above, the agreement is sweeping, covering all the photos in your account taken over the next three months (the site’s agreements work in three month cycles). This differs from Flickr, where you can choose licenses for photos individually.

Here’s what an individual photo page looks like on the website:

Once you’re part of the program (over a thousand Instagrammers are already), your photographs will be marked through the service as being CC licensed. The website doesn’t currently offer any easy way to search through these photos, but there is an API that developers can use to do searches.

We’re guessing that a web interface will be coming shortly, either by Neustrom himself, or by another developer using the API.

I Am CC (via Lifehacker)