Leading technology blog Wired has decided to release all photos from its in-house photography team under a Creative Commons license.

In an era when so many online publications are considering how they can monetize content, it is interesting to see one publication sacrificing copyright gains in favour of 'giving something back' to the internet community.

The blog told readers "Like many other sites across the web, we've benefited from CC-licensed photos at Wired.com for years -- thank you, sharers! It seems only fitting, and long overdue, to start sharing ourselves."

The site, with the collaboration of its in-house photographers Jim Merithew, Keith Axline and Jon Snyder, has released material under a CC BY-NYC license, which is defined by the Creative Commons website as

"Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms."

This means that users can effectively do what they will with the photos, provided that the aim is not commercial and that they attribute the photograph via a link to the original source - for instance, this squirrel shaped sample of the Wired creative commons stock, was taken from the article Art, Madness and Electronics at Maker Faire 2010 and captured by Jim Merithew.

Not all images on the site will be available for download under a CC license, as not all the work used by the site comes from the three in-house photographers - so before you plunder the site, check to see what images are up for grab. Creative commons material will be marked by a CC logo to distinguish it from material that is subject to the usual copyright restrictions.

Sources: Creative Commons, Wired (1), (2)