Finding Free Copyrighted Material for Your Course

Hi, my name is Nancy Simmons. I’m a copyright officer here at Memorial University. This video is about how to find images on the internet that are free to use without copyright clearance.

Whenever you create course material for students or works for publication, you often wish you could find an image to illustrate your work and make it come alive. With the vast array of images found on the internet, it is often quite easy to find something you would like to use. But before you use someone else’s image, you must consider copyright. Do you need permission to use an image you found on the web? The best way to proceed is to find images that are posted with permissions already in place. That is, the copyright owner posted the image with a notice allowing free reuse. Here are some ways to find such images.

First, go to the Google Images site and type in a search term. You’ll see a lot of images, but you will need to narrow these results. Click on Search Tools, and then Usage Rights, which will bring up a menu which will give you various options. These are licensing terms that the copyright owner put on their image when they posted them. The Least Restrictive option is labeled for reuse with modification. But if you don’t need to modify the image or your purpose is non-commercial, you will widen your search if you choose one of the other options. You can also click on the cog in the top right-hand corner. Go down to Advanced Search and then go to Usage Rights and bring up the menu with similar choices. You will note that you can restrict your search in other ways on this page. If you see an image you like, click on through to the website where it is located so you can see the details of the license. There may be limitations that are not immediately recognized by Google Search. This image is on Wikipedia, which has license details on a separate page for each image that is posted there. Clicking on the image itself will take you there. This image is listed as public domain because it was originally created by the U.S. Government. Which does not claim copyright on works created by government departments. Some images, such as this, have been licensed under a Creative Commons license. This image includes a provision that you must share alike if you adapted into something new, changing the color or cropping it, for example. Any adaptation must be made available using the same licensing terms, allowing other people to use the new work in the same way. You are also required to provide attribution to the author in whatever method they specify. You may wish to look for something cleared under a CC attribution license instead, such as this image. Note that this page also mentions the standard GNU license offered by Wikipedia. If this were the only type of license available for the image, you would need to click through and check the terms. Note that the GNU license is share alike. You may use the CC license though in this case as it is less restrictive.

Another way to find free images would be to use the Creative Commons site itself. The Creative Commons website has a page that helps find many types of works using other search tools. Go to the Creative Commons page and click on Find CC Licensed Works. If your work will be commercial or you wish to adapt or modify the work, check the appropriate box. Type in your search term and choose a search tool below. When you click on the box, you will search that particular site. Then you can choose the particular image you’re interested in. You’ll note under Flickr, you will often see the notification “Some rights reserved.” If you click that link, it will tell you the terms of the license, usually a Creative Commons license. The CC page also allows you to search for other types of free-use copyright material. If you have any questions about Creative Commons, check the DELTS video about these licenses.

For these or any other questions, you may also contact the University Copyright Office.

Hi, I’m Nancy Simmons, a Copyright Officer here at Memorial University of Newfoundland. This video is about a common problem that is encountered after you’ve found an image on the internet but have lost the information about the source of that image. Sometimes you discover that you’ve lost the reference just when you decide you would like to use the image in your teaching materials or publications. Attribution is a requirement of basic academic practice, and you can’t give attribution if you don’t know where the image came from. In addition, you can’t determine whether you need to obtain permission to use an image unless you know the source and see it in context and determine if there are restrictions on its use. Fortunately, Google Images has a nifty little tool for finding sources for images you already have. Go to the Google Images page. You’ll notice there’s a camera in the search box. This camera is linked to the Search by Image tool. The simplest way is just to drag the image and drop it into the Google Images box. Or if you click on the camera, you can do the drag and drop, or you can paste an image URL, or you can upload it from your computer. But the easiest way is just drag and drop. So, if you take your picture, you just drag it into the box. Google will search for the image and suggest possible sources. If you click on the picture it shows at the front, it shows you a whole lot of different sources that that same image could be found at. What I often choose, if I see a Wikipedia source, I often grab that one because it often has more information about a source. But also, you’ll see that it also suggests visually similar images. So, something similar to what you had, even if it can’t find the exact one that you’re looking for. So, this is a very simple way to retrace your steps. However, there is one drawback that if you have put your image in a Word file, such as this, and you try to drag it into Google Images, it won’t work. So, what you have to do is save this image as an image file or a picture file, such as a JPEG or a PNG. And once you’ve saved it as a JPEG, you can again just drag, drop. And you can see you can do it at any time with the bar there, and it will find it.

Remember, you can’t make a determination about the copyright status of an image unless you know where it came from. The author of a work has the right to be identified under Canadian copyright law. If you have any questions, please contact the University Copyright Office.