500px Follows Flickr’s Lead, Introduces Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons licensing is becoming a common option on major photo and video sharing services — Flickr and YouTube, for example — but it’s not something that 500px offered — until now. The fast-growing Flickr rival is now onboard with flexible copyright agreements, rolling out Creative Commons licensing options for all of its users yesterday.

In its announcement, the company explains,

For artists and creators, copyright is often a challenge because on one hand they want to protect their work and on the other they’d like it to spread.

[…] Creative Commons licensing […] gives our photographers more options to let others share and re-use their work. This opt-in program provides the 500px community with greater flexibility on usage, photo attribution and additional sharing opportunities.

Photographers can now allow their photographs to be used for certain purposes (e.g. non-commercial sharing with credit) without having to give express permission to the users.

500px has launched a dedicated Creative Commons page (shown above) with search options and a description of the licensing conditions: Attribution, Share Alike, Non-Commercial, and No Derivative Works.

The site’s search engine now includes a drop-down menu with CC licenses, helping you more easily find the photographs you’d like to (and have permission to) use:

Finally, like on Flickr, individual photo pages now display exact copyright status of each photo with easily recognizable icons:

500px believes that the new licensing options will lead to “increased traffic from bloggers, publishers and media outlets that have been clamoring to get at the content for several years.” There are now tens of millions of photographs hosted on the service, so that’s a pretty reasonable prediction.

500px Creative Commons (via Mashable)

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