A Bit about Copyright

The Internet is filled with millions of images, many of which have been indexed by Google’s Web crawler. The world’s images are at your fingertips, but be aware that even though you can view the images Google displays, Google does not offer you any rights to use that image.

What is copyright

Governments provide certain rights over the manner in which an idea or information is expressed. Copyright protection covers works such as books, photos, musical works, sound recordings, paintings, software, and designs, but only for a limited time. Copyright is then legal protection for authors and artisans to keep others from copying or using their work without their explicit permission.

Copyright protection is automatically granted whenever something copyrightable is created, whether it is officially registered with the copyright office or not. Once you create something, such as a photo, you are the copyright holder, unless you give those rights to someone else, such as an employer. A copyright holder has the privilege of granting or not granting the right to copy something or if it is a musical or sound recording, the right to play it.

Copyright is protected by both civil and criminal law. Copyright holders can sue someone they believe has infringed on their copyright. In other words, the work was used or copied without permission. Depending on the financial loss and how many copies of the work were created, the person who infringed the copyright may be guilty of a felony.

The bottom line here is that things people create are protected and you must get permission to use other people’s creations. The idea that you can use it for nonprofit purposes freely is not true. No matter how you use it, you need to get permission.

Getting permission

It is always safest to assume that anything you find on the Internet, such as images and Web page content is copyright protected. Before you can use all or part of the work you find, ask for written permission from the owner of the copyright. It’s best not to believe that you can use an original work and not get permission. For example, my grandson has a picture of himself on his Web page wearing a surf helmet and a great smile. One day, I was helping a friend find a dentist locally, and I was stunned to find my grandson’s smiling face staring back at me as part of a dentist locator service Web page. I admit that the likelihood that I would come across that image was remote, but there are organizations that actively search out people violating their copyright.

Who to ask

An original work, as just described, does not have to be registered with the government before it is protected by copyright law. It is protected immediately upon creation. The author, unless commissioned or hired to do the work, is automatically the copyright holder for the original work. When more than one person works on an original work, they are considered co-owners of the copyright.

Sometimes Web pages have a copyright notice, including the year of copyright. Copyright notices will have the word copyright or the copyright symbol (c). Remember, Web pages do not have to have a copyright notice to be protected by copyright; they are protected automatically. A good first place to look for the name of the copyright holder is to look for either a copyright notice or a link to legal information. Some professional Web pages have an entire page dedicated to stating their legal protections.

When you can’t find the name of the copyright holder, such as on a personal Web page, for example, look for the name of the Web page creator. Sometimes this simply appears as a link to the Webmaster, the author of the Web page. In the event that no author information exists on the page, there is one other way you can sometimes find the author, and that is through tracking down the owner of the domain name. You can usually find out the name and sometimes the contact information for domain owners by using the Whois application and most domain registrars like GoDaddy.com. Find the Whois link, and type the domain name of the Web site for which you would like the owner’s name.

How to ask

When you know the name of the person or organization that holds the copyright to an image, it is best to send a letter documenting your request. Clearly identify the image with a description, and name of the image file. To find the name of the image file you can right-click on the image displayed in your Web browser and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The filename is usually displayed. In some cases, the filename is masked, and you must describe the image and the URL of the Web page on which you found it. It’s best to simply copy and paste the URL from the address bar in your Web browser.

You can sometimes send an e-mail to the copyright holder, and use the e-mail response as proof of permission. If you are going to use the image for anything other than personal reasons - for example, if you are going to use the image in a book - it is best to have the copyright holder send you a release form. There are sample release forms you can use as a template. Use Google to search on keywords sample copyright release.

In addition to finding people yourself and negotiating the copyright release, there are also commercial services available that will handle this on your behalf. One of those services can be found at www.copyright.com.

Images in the public domain

Creations such as art, music, drama, and inventions to which no one claims a copyright are held in the public domain. These creations are considered a part of our common cultural heritage and may be used freely by anyone for any reason. For example, many of the images available from the archives of the presidential libraries are public domain.

Cross-Ref 

Once you find the image you want to use and obtain permission to use it, consider using Google’s Picasa program to edit the image. Learn more about using Picasa to edit images in Chapter 21.

When researching whether an item of interest is in the public domain, do not confuse it with works offered for free, or open source creations. Open source is covered in more detail in the next section. An author, creator, or inventor may offer his or her work for free while still maintaining the copyright. Offering a work for free does not place it in the public domain. One distinction is that works offered for free may have limits placed on its use. For example, images offered for free but held under copyright may be excluded from use for the promotion of adult or sexual content.

You can find hundreds of sites on the Internet that offer public domain images, either exclusively or as part of their gallery of images. There are many U.S. government Web sites that contain public domain images. For example you might start here: http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml.

Even on the firstgov.gov site there is a warning that even though the images can be freely used, many of them are covered under a license.

Open source images

Open Source is a philosophy about how intellectual property should be made available to others. Inventions, creations, images, and other intellectual property released as Open Source are covered under a special license agreement. The most common of these is called the GNU public license (www.gnu.org). When the movement first started, it was the exclusive domain of software developers who believed that source code should be made freely available to others to use, and to create derivative works. Later, many other forms of intellectual property were made available as Open Source. Here is one Web site you can access to find open source images: http://openphoto.net/.

You can find additional resource for Open Source images by doing a search in Google on open source images.