I'm pretty new to actually USING CL for much of anything other than random eye candy and visual inspiration. I recently discovered the whole "color a pattern" deal and that's a pretty cool feature.

HOWEVER, I'm a writer by trade. I really GET copyright infringement. I'm confused about patterns. I'm able to color a pattern, give credit to the creator of the pattern (and creator of the palette if I use a specific palette), I'm offered the feature of downloading the palette, but it has a CL watermark on it. Am I allowed to use a pattern colored on CL or not?

I don't want to use any material I'm not allowed to. I've seen lots of threads here about "stolen material."

As I understand it, the material is "stolen" when it breaks the creative commons license, which is listed on every one of the items that you'll find on CL. In general, the license allows for the use of an item provided that full credit is given to the person who created it. There appears to be some debate over what "credit" means, but the safest bet is always to include a link back to the profile of the person who created the content. That's how I do it, and I've used a couple of palettes here in HTML/CSS templates for use in role playing games.

In the majority of cases, the item may not be used for commercial use (unless the license is changed by the creator).

That being said, I'm also terribly confused by this. Unless an item is marked as "all rights reserved" (which is NOT automatic, by the way), then it should be usable provided that credit is given to the creator, in accordance with the creative commons.

Anything else will need to be explained to me, but this is the interpretation that I've made of creative commons as it applies to flickr.

I understand about giving credit. My question pertains to the fact that when I download the pattern (as the download link is provided), there is a colourlovers watermark all over it. So, what is the purpose of being able to color patterns if they aren't usable?

There's a COLOURlovers watermark on your patterns? That's bizarre. I wasn't aware that CL used watermarks.
If I'm not mistaken, downloaded patterns are to be used as desktop wallpaper only.

Oh, only as wallpaper? Well, that's good to know (and not very useful). Is there any place on the site where these rules are clearly spelled out? Yes, along the bottom of the image there is a big CL banner.

You can download the 200x200px sized pattern tile which is free of banner.

Slightly off-topic: there is actually a big debate about the banner-less 200x200 preview images. Many of us believe that they should not be made available (or at least with some kind of CL watermark) due to multiple website owners taking the preview images, labeling them as original creations, and making them available on their site for download, which blatantly violates copyrights. This has become a real problem.

ArrayOfLilly wrote:

You can download the 200x200px sized pattern tile which is free of banner.

If you can't download them, you can make a screenshot and cut it. Watermark isn't the solution, except if it is on all of your stuff.

Watermark makes all of your work unusable for everyone and for any purpose. All of your work will be wortheless junk.

This time my templates and patterns are under CC3 license with allowed commercial usage, etc.

If the watermark is introduced I will delete all of them. I make pattern, for people to use fairly. Some people can"t do this. They steal my stuff. But the idea and the ability for creating things remains mine. People who are thieves should be ashamed.

But even so, i still want to make things for people like you and others in this community.

I hope, watermark will be optional. If not, I will Quit!

On the other hand, without thiefs, I never would have heard about this site. And now I'm here and I can create things for the community.