Copyright & Usable Images

Copyright

  • A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform their creative work.

  • When someone creates an image, they own the image’s copyright.

  • Most of the images you find online are not available for use without the expressed permission or license.

  • If you reproduce, publish or distribute a copyrighted work without permission or a valid license, you are committing copyright infringement.

  • When a copyright owner's work is being infringed on, the copyright owner can send a notification of claimed infringement (often referred to as a "takedown notice"). Upon receipt of a takedown notice, you must remove the material or you could be subject to an infringement lawsuit.

Fair Use

  • Fair use is an open-ended doctrine that allows the public limited use of a copyrighted work without the holder’s permission for uses like criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

  • U.S. judges determine whether a fair use defense is valid according to four factors:

    • The purpose and character of the use

    • The nature of the copyrighted work

    • The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

    • The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Learn more from Google Legal Help.

Social Media and Copyright

  • You cannot post a copyrighted work to a social media site without permission.

  • When you post on a social media platform, you are agreeing to the site's terms of use, which often means you are:

    • Giving the site a license to use your work

    • Allowing other users to share the work within the platform with attribution

  • Copyright and social media is an evolving area - pay attention to changes in the law.

Copyright-Free Photography Websites

The following websites are examples of sites that have photographs available without copyright: they allow you to download, use, and modify their photos for free, without attribution.

Creative Commons Licenses

Sometimes people add Creative Commons (CC) licenses to their work, which automatically give others the right to use them under specific conditions of the license type.

Creative Commons (CC) License Types

There are different levels of licensing within Creative Commons. All CC licenses require attribution. Some licenses state you cannot change it in any way. Here are the common labels:

  • BY: Credit must be given to the creator (attribution)

  • NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted (you cannot use within a business setting)

  • ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted (you can only reuse it if you don't change it in any way)

Attribution

When reusing CC-licensed works, the attribution should include:

  • Title

  • Author

  • Source

  • License

  • If you adapted the work (ex: if you removed the background)

Finding Images Licensed Under Creative Commons

  • Search via Openverse

    • Go to https://wordpress.org/openverse/

    • Search

    • Check the different licenses you're looking for on the right side.

    • Find the image you'd like

    • Save the image and copy the attribution text.

  • Search on Google Images:

Royalty-Free

Don't let the name fool you, royalty-free is not free of charge. Stock photography websites like Shutterstock use royalty-free licenses, which means you pay to download the image and then may use the image as many times as you would like.