It’s on the internet so I can use it! WRONG!
Everything on the internet is free! WRONG!
I found this great meme on social media so I can use it! WRONG!
Copyright is complicated, free is not necessarily free! It’s important you have a basic understanding of Creative Commons licensing.
Creative Commons is a recognised set of licenses, each granting different rights to use materials licensed under them. All of these licenses offer varying degrees of additional permissions than “all rights reserved.”
- CC0 Public Domain Dedication: means the owner has waived their copyrights. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
- Free Cultural Works is the most permissive of all CC licenses. They are the ones that can be most readily used, shared, and remixed by others, and go furthest toward creating a commons of freely reusable materials.
- Best Practices for attribution: One condition off all CC is attribution. Here are some good & bad examples of attribution.
Ref: http://creativecommons.org
The simplest way to stay out of trouble is to only use original content but it you want to be informed there are some great articles you can read up on. Here are just a few …
Laws change slightly in different countries. Australians can read up on Aussie copyright law at the Australian Copyright Council site.
There’s also a great article on wiki which is all about how to avoid infringing copyright or read Erica Napoletano’s interview with Cloudigy Law where she learns the 5 most common copyright myths when sharing videos & images without Violating Copyright.
Bloggers will find this practical guide for bloggers a good one to keep at hand, it explains DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) & cover loads of topics specifically for bloggers, including:
- Should Bloggers Register for Copyright?
- Can You Register a Copyright for Your Entire Blog?
- Can Bloggers Protect Their IP Without Registering?
- How Can Bloggers Register for Copyright?
- What Is “Fair Use?”
- How Does Copyright Work If You’re Blogging Under a Pseudonym?
- What’s the DMCA and how is it related to copyright infringement?
- What’s a DMCA Takedown Notice?
- What to Do If You Believe Someone Has Stolen Your Content
- What to Do If Someone Accuses You of IP Theft
- How Do International Copyrights Work?
Just this once … No-one will notice … WRONG! before you have any further illusions of invisibility, check out our article on reverse image lookup.
Have you ever realised an image you thought was legit, wasn’t? We’d love to hear your stories. Please comment below…
