Royalty-free means that you do not have to pay the creator to use this work per use. HOWEVER, you often have to pay to get the work first (whether you pay it or you use materials that we have purchased that are royalty-free).
Royalty-free works are often without many restrictions on their use. You will still need to check to see if you need to give credit to the creator of the work.
Creative Commons licenses allow creators to make a license that gives you the right to do different things with their creations. Creative Commons allows you to do more with other people's work than copyright.
There are six different license types, but not all will be helpful for your work. The four major elements are:
The four elements combine to make the six license types. The licenses that will be helpful for your projects are below (from most helpful to least helpful):
These two licenses aren't helpful for your projects since they don't allow you to make derivatives (i.e., remix their material into your project):
To see more about the individual licenses, click the link below:
Creative works that are in the public domain do not have copyright protection and may be used freely.
They fall under these broad categories:
See the links below for helpful tools to help you determine if something is in the public domain.