Licensing and Creative Commons
Creative Commons:
This is a web recognized self-assigned licensing method. YOU say how your pics may or may not be used. This is entirely up to you; there are a few kinds of licenses to choose from I’ll recommend you go to the settings page and learn more: http://flickr.com/account/prefs/license/ and you can set your prefs for your account there as well. Here are some detailed descriptions of the various licenses: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
Basically there are licenses for everything from “You can use it, if you credit me” up to something akin to “keep your hands off my stuff you dirty thief!”
Flickr has a search for finding pictures in the various Creative Commons categories and I know many publishers and magazines etc will do these to find pictures. My mother’s own pictures have been used on Wikipedia many times for varous things, as well as having photos she took of her hometown purchased to use in a chain restaurant!
If you are unsure what LIcense is best for you, here is a handy wizard: http://creativecommons.org/license/
Remember though, that putting them online, even with this licensing, exposes your photos to possible theft. While you can turn off who can get to your full size originals, who can blog, print, even comment on etc, you can never protect against screenshots.
In you account settings you can set a default choice for your license, but you can readjust this on batches of pics in Organizr or individually from the more info section the the far right bottom on your photo page.
Whew! That is pretty comprehensive.
People should know though, that even if you set your photos so that no one can download and print them, they still can download and print them. It’s just a little more work but any photo from Flickr can be saved to someone else’s computer and printed. Their “spaceball” trick will only slow down a determined image thief, not prevent them.
If you really REALLY don’t want anyone saving your photos, it’s best not to put them online at all.