Knowing Your Digital Material Licenses

 

Scrapbooking

Those of you who love making scrapbook pages and other digital crafts, without no doubt require a wide range of materials that can support your creativity. These digital materials may include cliparts, textured paper, and other embellishments. 

There are plenty of digital materials available in the internet; you can either buy them in digital scrapbook stores, subscribe to digital membership sites, or download them for free. Whichever method you choose to get the supporting digital materials, you need to know first their licenses prior to using them. This way, you will not face allegations of misuse of copyrights from the designers. 

Why Do You Need To Know The Licenses of Digital Materials? 

Assume you want to make a name tag for your child who will enter school. In addition to knowing the size of a standard name tag that you will create, you also will need cliparts, textured papers (backgrounds), and other decorations. To get these materials, you can use the available images in image processing software such as Adobe Photoshop, Ulead PhotoImpact, Paint Shop Pro, etc., or use the ones available in Microsoft software. 

However, you might want to have more; you want cliparts that are truly unique as well as additional decorations that are not available in those software. For that, you can get them easily on the internet. Simply by browsing on search engines, you can get the desired digital materials with fairly prices, fast delivery, as well as endless variations. 

In fact, if you are a bit more persistent, you can get them for free aka no need to spend a dime at all! However, before using them in making the name tag, it’s good to know the licenses of each materials that you will use. Therefore, you can be creative without worrying about violating the designers’ copyrights. 

Below are common digital material licenses that you should know. For more details of the license and proper usage, you can always check the Term of Use of the materials in their origin websites. 

Personal Use Materials 

When you find digital materials that are licensed Personal Use, it means you can only use them for your own personal uses or interests. For example, when you buy a Personal Use winter digital kit; you can use all the materials included in the kit to make your own scrapbook pages, family photo frames, personal greeting cards, etc. 

The core meaning of this license is that you may not use the materials for activities that generate profit for you. Even though you design the greeting card by your self and print it with your own printer into a finished card; if you are intended to sell it then you can not use the materials. 

However, there are concessions held by this license; you can still make creations as gifts for your family and close friends, such as making a greeting card for mothers day. As long as you do not get profit from these creations, you still can use Personal Use materials. 

Commercial Use Materials 

When you buy or download Commercial Use licensed materials, you can use them to make creations that can generate profit by selling them. The creations can be finished printed products such as greeting cards, bookmarks, etc or digital downloads such as party bag templates, etc. 

But if you decide to use the materials for making your own personal creations, then it is also fine. You can use them to make your own greeting cards, photo frames, bookmarks, etc and keep them for your own. 

Commercial Use For Commercial Use (CU4CU) 

CU4CU licensed materials can be used to make profit by selling them directly without having to convert them to other creations first. This is a fundamental difference between Commercial Use (CU) and CU4CU materials; if you use CU materials, you must convert them to other creations in advance to get profit from them. A very clear example is when you buy CU and CU4CU cliparts; you can use CU cliparts to create a greeting card and sell the finished printed or digital download card. Meanwhile, CU4CU cliparts can be sold directly as cliparts or you can combine them with other materials into digital kits and sell them. 

However, if you want to sell CU4CU materials, you must first have a reseller license from the materials designer. In order to become a reseller, you must pay a fairly expensive reseller license fee, but worth the convenience of making profit from the CU4CU materials. 

S4H and S4O Materials 

What's the meaning of S4H and S4O? Many times when you visit a digital scrapbook store you find materials with S4H and S4O licenses. S4H means Scrap for Hire, meanwhile S4O means Scrap for Others. The two terms are used interchangeably and have very similar meaning, that is creating digital scrapbook pages or digital crafts for others. A slight difference is S4H materials can be used to make digital creations for others who pay for your creativity, while when you Scrap for Others you don’t necessarily ask for payment. 

What Kind of Materials You Should Choose? 

Now after knowing the descriptions of each of the digital materials' licenses, you might wonder what kind of materials to choose for your creative works. 

Go for Personal Use materials if you want to use them for your own personal projects and makes no profit from them. 

Pick up Commercial Use materials if you want to use them to create projects that you can sell and make profit from them. 

Get CU4CU materials to sell them directly "as is" or combine them with other CU4CU materials to make other commercial kits. Remember, you must first have reseller license before selling them. 

Use S4H/ S4O materials if you want to make projects for a family or friend who hires your creativity. 

Some designers label their digital kits PU/S4O/S4H. This means the kits or digital products can be used in Personal Use, Scrap for Hire, and Scrap for Others activities. 

There's a common understanding that S4H or S4O is not considered commercial, even though you make money from it, because you create a digital work only for a specific person. You may not repeat your work and provide it for someone else because that would be considered a commercial activity. When you scrap for hire or scrap for others, most designers prefer you give your client a finished result. That means no layered works, clipart, embellishment, or papers bundled in your work so that your client can choose what the finish result will be. You should give your client a flatten format work where all the papers, cliparts, borders, embellishments, alphabets, etc used are merged into one finished result. 

Generally, Commercial Use materials are meant to create digital projects/ crafts that you sell for personal use. It means that your buyer is the direct user of your work. You can not make digital creations that allow others to buy for resale. That is why many designers prefer you create a finished product instead of a kit when you want to make profit from their Commercial Use materials. 

There is also general agreement that you may only use CU materials to produce works in limited quantities. That is, you are not allowed to produce your digital creations in mass such as through professional printing company. Instead, you can sell your work on a personal website, local bazaars, social activities, and the like. Some designers allow their digital materials (cliparts, embellishments, papers, etc) used to create products to sell in Zazzle, Cafepress, and other print on demand companies. 

However, to know it for sure, you must always read their Term of Use or contact them directly and ask whether this kind of use is allowed or not with their products. What About Sharing Freebies? If you're a creative person who loves sharing your creations rather than selling them, most of the time you can use CU materials to support your creativity. However, I'd still suggest you ask the designers first and clearly state the purpose of using their materials and what kind of digital works you create.