Regular visitors to Innovation Cafe are well aware of the importance of properly licensing copyrighted materials. But what if you could get art, music, video and photographs for free, without worrying about copyright? The good news is that you can.
This will be a living post, in that I will periodically add materials to it.
Original United States Government Works (and some state works) Are Not Subject to Copyright
That’s right. Anything that the United States government created is not copyright eligible under U.S. law (specifically, 17 U.S. Code § 105). That statute makes clear that “Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.” What does this mean for you? Plenty.
Before we share links and get into how you can use Google and Bing to find copyright-free government works, we need to address quasi-exceptions to the rule. While original US government works are not subject to copyright, US government publications can include copyrighted material. Lawyers know that you don’t ignore a “but” when you read a statute. In this case, the statute allows the United States to hold copyrights that it acquires. The United States can also license a copyrighted work to appear on a government webpage or elsewhere. So while images from NASA satellites are clearly original US government works, NASA also makes clear that it sometimes puts copyrighted third party materials online (but marks them as copyrighted). You should also be aware that while there may not be a copyright in a US government work, there may be other restrictions on using it (for example, agency seals are restricted, classified materials are restricted, etc.).
Similarly, there is nothing in US law prohibiting states from holding and asserting a copyright in their own original works. I know, it seems wildly unfair for a state to create a work using taxpayer funds and then refuse to allow the taxpayers to use it, but nobody ever said the law is always fair. There are plenty of resources online to help you understand your rights to use state-created works. You need to do up to date research to confirm it (because laws can and do change), but generally (with exceptions) California and Florida do not hold copyright in their original works. The other states have more complex rules.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into how you can find copyright-free materials.
The first trick you need to know is the “site:” operator. This operator works on Google Images and Bing Images (as well as other search types, such as video). Let’s say we wanted to find an image of the Lincoln Memorial that was not copyrighted. We would search for “Lincoln Memorial site:.gov“. We see a bunch of images of the Lincoln Memorial. But wait! Don’t just grab one and use it. First, we need to make sure it is an original U.S. Government (or Florida or California government) work. Since the “.gov” top level domain is also used by states, we are pretty likely to get results that include copyrighted materials. Note that sometimes the government licenses copyrighted materials to put online, so use caution.
This search result looks pretty good, as it comes from a federal agency (the National Park Service).
However, on the same page of results there are images that are potentially subject to copyright, such as the ones below created by New York City and Lincoln, Nebraska (or licensed by them).
One solution is to use a more specific search. For example, if we want images of national parks that are not copyright, we can change the “site” operator to “site:nps.gov”. While we don’t normally think of the U.S. Military as an artistic institution, they generate some amazing content. If you want footage of jets taking off, it is as easy as searching for “jet taking off site:.mil“. The same search works on California government sites and Florida government sites (although for some reason the search in Florida does not have any jets taking off, but does feature this image of Jimmy Buffet).
Many Creators Have Works You Can Use For Free — But Be Sure to Comply With the Other License Terms:
There are also other works that you can use subject to non-financial copyright terms, such as providing attribution to the copyright holder. These are explained very well by Wikimedia.org (although be aware that different nations may have different rule). To limit your search to materials on Wikimedia.org, just use “site:wikimedia.org“. Let’s do a quick walkthrough of how you might go about using materials from Wikimedia.org. Here are our search results (sorry, I searched for “scary clowns”):
Let’s image that I want to use the third image of a scary clown. I’ll click on it and it gives me this page. I’m not quite sure why a scary clown would have a tongue piercing, but the image is great quality and high resolution, so you can zoom in and see that. It makes her less of a scary clown. A little bit, anyhow. In any event, the actual scary thing is at the bottom of the page, where the copyright and other warnings appear (and remember, there is never a guarantee that the image is owned by the person who purportedly offered it under a shared license):
Let’s go through it. The summary is interesting, but what we care about it the licensing section (do read the personality rights warning — you don’t want to violate the Right of Publicity). The license terms are summarized — and if you don’t follow them, it is copyright infringement, just like stealing an image from Getty Images would be copyright infringement (unless there is a fair use defense, but that’s a whole different article). In this case, you have to provide a link to the license, indicate if changes were made, credit the creator, and not indicate that you or your use are endorsed by the creator. Simple, but people screw this up all of the time. Just follow the directions. I know very few people click through and read the actual license, but it is worth doing to make sure that the summary is accurate (Wikimedia’s summaries are generally quite accurate, but there is no substitute for reading it yourself).
Older Works With Expired Copyrights:
I almost did not include this section because of the risk of confusion, so I’ll put a big disclaimer right here: Different countries have different copyright terms and requirements, and just because a work is in the public domain in one country does not mean it is in the public domain in another country. Of course, for truly ancient works (200 years old seems quite safe), you are unlikely to encounter these kinds of problems. However, for works that just went into the public domain in one nation, do not assume that they are public domain in all nations. They probably are not.
There are a lot of sources where you can find works purportedly in the public domain. You should still confirm that status before using them. Sources like https://pdimagearchive.org/ are simple to use. Others, like https://archive.org/, are fantastic resources, but you definitely need to confirm public domain status for works you obtain there. There are many other resources out there.
Don’t just assume that an old work is in the public domain. Copyrights can easily last over a century (for example, this article was covered by copyright as soon as it was placed in a tangible form, and the copyright will last until 70 years after I die). If a two year old draws a bunch of lines with crayon today, and lives to be 102 years old, the drawing they made today would not expire until 170 years from now. As I mentioned earlier, copyright law is complex, for for example if a work was published before 1964 and the copyright registration was not renewed (something that was a requirement at the time), it may be in the public domain.
Fair Use:
Fair use (or, in some countries, Fair Dealing) is the ability to use copyrighted materials without a license to the copyright under very specific conditions. Please read https://innovationcafe.us/navigating-fair-use-what-creators-educators-and-innovators-need-to-know and make sure you are confident your use is fair use. You don’t want to risk copyright infringement by going with “I think it might be fair use”.
Minutia:
I am not aware of any case where the United States asserted copyright protection under the laws of another country, but 17 U.S. Code § 105 does not appear to preclude that. It would violate the U.S. Government’s traditional approach to copyright in its own works, but in theory the United States could sue an Australian website creator for using original US works in Australia under Australian law. The chances of that happening are vanishingly small, but not impossible. This is not atypical of copyright law in general: Every country has its own rules; the exceptions to the rules are complicated; licensing is complicated; pretty much everything has some risk or exception. Even paying the full license fee to a well known and well respected stock media site, such as Getty Images, carries the small but not impossible risk that the photographer who sold the image to Getty did now properly hold the copyright.
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