Finding free images online: Part I

Copyright, Creative Commons and the public domain

So you have decided that you should incorporate a few good images within your online course, and although you have pondered stock photography, you feel a bit out of pocket at present. Cognizant of the fact that the Internet is a wealth of free resources and awaiting your talents of discovery – some questions loom above your head: Where do I begin? How will I know if this is legal?

Well the best place to start is with a very basic understanding of copyright and how it applies to the usability of materials online. To summarize, anything that is created by you or I – whether it is a childhood drawing or fictional short story – we automatically have sole ownership of our creations in any form they may take. To protect creative works, copyright as indicated by the c symbol - © - any person interested in utilizing our creative work is still required by law to ask for written permission from the author as well as the possibility of paying a licensing fee. However, as the Internet has grown overtime the access of information and resources have changed, subsequently blurring some of the restrictions with regards to copyright laws. That is still not to say and/or perpetuate cyber myths abound, that anyone may claim the free use of any type of material online because it was uploaded for public access via the World Wide Web. This conclusion is often confused with the legal term “public domain” and although we may still associate domain names with the freedom of access to web pages on the World Wide Web, there is no such thing as the "public domain" on the Internet.

In layman terms the public domain refers to works, ideas, and information which are intangible to private ownership and/or which are available for use by the general public.

Canadian works typically enter the public domain in Canada due to its expired copyright for one of the following reasons:

1. it was subject to Crown copyright and was first published more than 50 years ago, or

it was not subject to Crown copyright, and

1. it is a photograph that was created before January 1, 1949, or
2. the creator died more than 49 years ago
3. the creator relinquished all rights to the work

To address the distribution and/or sharing of information, a secondary licensing meant to work in tandem with the current copyright laws has been implemented, which is also known as a Creative Common license. It is represented by a double CC symbol. This particular license gives the artist the power to specify online in what manner his or her works can be utilized. The varying options within the Creative Commons license, in which the creative owner specifies how their works are to be used by others are based on the following parameters:

Attribution (by)	Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
Noncommercial (nc)	Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
No Derivative Works (nd)	Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative based on it.
Share-alike (sa)	Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

To read up on the varying combination of the Creative Commons license guidelines visit here: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

Additional Terminology:

Verbatim – exactly the same: i.e. a copied or reproduced image that is exactly the same as the original image

Derivative – not original: i.e. an altered version of an image that was intentionally edited with photo editing software

Royalty-free - images are free of royalties, but they are not free to use without purchase. The creator of a royalty-free song or photo still owns the work and any individual can purchase the right to use the work without paying a royalty each and every time the art is used. If the intent is to reuse that particular work, this is typically a cost effective approach in purchasing creative works.

Be sure to return to EdTech PD's Blog as I will be concluding this topic in how to discover the best resources for your online image search, Part II: Finding free images online – Databases and Search Tools