Polls from what people think commercial and non commercial mean, mean nothing to me, if i asked people to vote on the sex of a chicken, the chicken wouldn’t change sex if most people were wrong, in the same way that what a non-commercial license means for people is irrelevant because people may be wrong and because people can change opinion, which would lead to the meaning of a creative commons non-commercial license changing according to country, person, situations, feelings, year, etc… a huge mess, meaning, people that have a non commercial license don’t even know what is that license supposed to be or to do if we are relying on polls to define things.

And this “defining non-commercial” thing seems really nice, but it’s missing the “defining” part as i was expecting to see some sort of definition.

If baffles me how could a project like this get so far with this big of a hole in it.

What is a non-commercial use has to be defined by the license issuers, in this case, creative commons.

Excerpt of the definition of “commercial” by Oxford Dictionaries that is relevant to this “youtube thing” is “…having profit rather than artistic or other value as a primary aim: …”.
Other reputable dictionaries back this up, it seems like a fuzzy area but it also seems like it doesn’t apply to me, making money isn’t my primary goal but if i can make some it’ll be good.

Are donations classified as commercial too? (rhetorical question, by definitions widely accepted by reputable sources they are not) I could just ask for donations instead of displaying ads and use the same software that has non-commercial use and still make money out of it.

P.S. Stop demonizing copyright, copyright isn’t only an “all rights reserved” thing, copyright is whatever the user itself wants it to be, that’s why i don’t need to research for copyright as the users will usually indicate what i can and can’t do with their work in some kind of note attached to it, on the other hand there’s creative commons, people just put this garbage CC stamp all over their work and don’t say what we can and can’t do with it, then when we google for this in order to get informed (like i did), we end up leaving with no concrete answers, creative commons, thanks for making things sooo much easier and clearer for both users and producers, really.

small example:
my band just finished a record, a small non-profit d.i.y-punkrock label has paied alle the production costs and has supplied us with a reasonable amount of free copiies for ourselves,

the album will be sold on a low price which will refinance the expenses of our small d.i.y.-label, any surplus will be used to support other small d.i.y.-bands with their releases,

we consider this lowlevel distribution to be a noncommercial use of our music that is in our view the best possible way to benefit the d.i.y-scene of which we are part of and have therefor agreed to the distribution by our label,
does this conflict with the NC-license?

Sorry I am new, and I want to make sure all this is squared away. Currently I do have songs that can be used but want to make sure for other ones.

Thank you.

Brian: Well said.

Sharon: Fair point. Best you can do now is probably to use NC as it exists: lots of “commercial” sites will use anyway (and lots of “noncommercial” sites won’t, but that’s the price you pay for using NC), and profiting from directly selling licensed works is the one thing unambiguously not permitted.

Ian: YouTube partner means you’re sharing advertising revenue with them, right? If so, there’s your answer: the use is pretty clearly directed at gaining monetary compensation.

Michael: No idea, but given you’re doing some kind of content search, I’d guess, why not just stick to non-NC images? There are millions. You don’t gain much by attempting to walk a fine line around NC.

Aarne: The NC term doesn’t specify that everything a for-profit does is always commercial. But as with previous answer, why bother attempting to walk fine line? There are plenty of songs and sounds to use under fully free licenses you can use in your podcast.

Even though the company itself is obviously commercial, the podcast’s purpose isn’t making money but to give information. There’s no fee in listening it and there’s no advertising, probably only a mention who’s producing the podcast.

So my question is basically is everything a company makes always commercial? There are companies out there that have revenue stream on one side and non-profit actions on another.

After the user installed the app, he selects content that he wants to learn and the app downloads a bunch of images, some of these images are CC-NC. Do you think this is illegal?