Where to find Creative Commons videos you can legally reuse
How to find videos you're allowed to download, remix and share — on YouTube and beyond — and how to credit them properly.
2 min read · Updated
Most online video is all-rights-reserved: watch, but don't reuse. A large and growing library isn't. Creative Commons and public-domain videos can be downloaded and reused, often even commercially, as long as you follow the licence — usually just giving credit.
What Creative Commons means
Creative Commons licences are ready-made permissions creators attach to their work. The basic one, CC BY, lets anyone copy, share and adapt the work, including commercially, as long as they credit the creator. Other versions add conditions: NC (non-commercial only), SA (share adaptations under the same licence) and ND (no adaptations).
Public-domain material has no copyright restrictions at all — often because it's old, or because it was made by government agencies whose work isn't copyrighted in their country.
Finding Creative Commons videos on YouTube
YouTube lets uploaders mark videos with the CC BY licence, and you can filter for them:
- Search YouTube for your topic.
- Open Filters on the results page.
- Under Features, choose Creative Commons.
Check the licence line in the video's description before relying on it — it's shown there when a video uses Creative Commons. Once confirmed, you can download it with the YouTube downloader, or just the part you need.
Other good sources
Beyond YouTube, these are reliable places to look:
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed and public-domain media, with the licence on every file page.
- Internet Archive — public-domain films, historical footage and openly licensed collections; check each item's rights statement.
- NASA — most NASA imagery and video isn't subject to copyright, though NASA asks you not to imply endorsement.
- Stock sites such as Pexels and Pixabay — free to use under their own licences, which are generous but aren't Creative Commons; read the terms.
How to give credit
A good attribution names the title, the creator, the source and the licence, with links where you can: “Mountain timelapse” by Jane Doe (YouTube), licensed under CC BY 4.0. In a video, put it in the description or end credits; in a presentation, on the slide or a credits slide.
Common mistakes
Most licensing trouble comes from a handful of assumptions:
- Assuming “free to watch” means “free to reuse” — it doesn't.
- Using an NC-licensed clip in a monetised video or advert.
- Trusting a re-upload's licence — the person who re-uploaded may not own the video.
- Forgetting the music: a CC-licensed video can still contain music the uploader didn't have the right to license.
For everything that isn't openly licensed, what you may legally keep explains the general rules.