Web Design and Copyright: Home

A good blog post on the basics of copyright as it concerns images, and when fair use may apply. Written by an attorney who specializes in social media.

Another good blog post that summarizes the issues of copyright.

Summary from the US copyright office

This is a nice infographic created for Fair Use Week.

Want to dig deep? Here's the entirety of US copyright law as it stands now. Be prepared for lots of legal terminology.

This is a quick way to get a general sense of copyright status based on date of publication.

A good portal for searching collections by creative commons license and finding material that can be freely reused and, in many cases, modified. For images, choose one of the image collections, like Flickr.

A site that provides images that you can use freely. In many cases you will need to ask the artist permission, but it has an embedded feature in order to do this.

Collection of images that are free to use, as long as your modify them.

Collection of free stock photos. Supported by ad revenue.

Free images for non-commercial use.

Trying to find the origins of an image that you like? Try using this Google feature. In Google Images, click the little camera icon in the search box, and then copy in the URL of the image that you have, or upload a jpg. The results may give you the information you need to get back to the copyright holder. (ex. http://i.imgur.com/2lQYezK.jpg)

Nice collection of free photographs.

A wide variety of audio resources. Be careful with this one and read the fine print, as not everything here is free to use.

Music and other music resources that are free to use.

A good portal for searching collections by creative commons license. For audio, choose one of the music collections, like Jamendo, ccMixter, and SoundCloud.

A streaming collection of music and podcasts. Files can be easily embedded through the links under Share. There is much content here that is licensed under Creative Commons that can be downloaded, reused and modified. Filter results under "Tracks" after searching.