Adobe Stock and Creative Commons licenses

Question

Hi there

I have a few queries about applying Creative Commons license on a document that contains four images from Adobe Stock, please.

Adobe's Standard License applies to the four images I have used, which I downloaded during a free trial period. I have used them in a document, adhering to the terms and conditions of the standard license. However, I would now like to apply a Creative Commons License to the document.

My questions are:

1) Can I apply a Creative Commons license to the document if it contains images downloaded from Adobe Stock during a trial period?

2) If I can, does it matter which Creative Commons license I use, or should I use the most restrictive (e.g. CC BY-NC-ND: allows people to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator)?

Any help would be much appreciated! I have asked Adobe staff on the chat, who have explained it is outside their scope of expertise. I have emailed Adobe Stock but have had no reply. I wondered if anyone here has been in a similar position and could advise, please?

Thanks and best wishes

Lesley

Abambo · Accepted Answer

Adobe stock items are copyrighted, and you can't change that to a creative commons licence. In all cases, even if the core of your document is free and may be in the public domain with a creative commons licence, Adobe assets stay copyrighted, and you are bound to the Adobe licence. This is true for free items and for items licenced with the 30-day-free test subscription. Even if you have a full paid subscription, you are still bound by the licencing terms.

As a side note: the licence you get from Adobe does not distinguish between commercial and non-commercial applications.

Furthermore, you have a standard licence of all the items licenced, so you are limited to a distribution of your e-book document to 500k exemplars. As I acknowledge, that this is a high number, that you probably do not reach, even for a free document, you have no mean to control that.

Look here for more information on licensing: https://community.adobe.com/t5/stock/links-for-licensing-terms/td-p/11366788
(Disclaimer: As always with licensing, this is my interpretation of the rules. I think they are correct and advice is based on reading and interpreting the licence terms and on fair use for both the buyer and the artist/stock company, but I cannot rule out that my interpretation is wrong. I'm not an Adobe employee).

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