What we need to remember is the rules of copyright, and know how to better protect ourselves.
Some ground rules are:
1. If you don't know if it is copyrighted, it probably is, so cite it.
This rule is a simple one, ignorance may be bliss when we're talking about war and other subjects that are disturbing to talk about, however, Copyright does not have to be one of these subjects. Ignorance in this case, to be honest, could: land you with a hefty fine, jail time, AND have other consequences such as expulsion from your school, district, or community via a firing at a job. Copyright is a law, and that means that we need to make sure that we are giving it the proper amount of respect that it deserves.
2. If it is copyrighted, give credit where credit is due.
This comes with an addendum, even if you give credit where credit is due you can still have a lawsuit taken against you for using someone's permission to use their creative works.
3. Always get permission when you're unsure whether or not you can use a creative work.
Creative works are always protected, going into a public domain is an easy way to sidestep this. However, someone can claim their work is their own at any time, and have you remove it due to the copyright laws.
4. Creative commons are your friends.
When using media and creative works, try to use creative commons:
Some Creative commons resources include:
Creativecommons.org.nz
Creativecommons.org
Creativecommons.org/licenses
You will find videos about creative commons on these sites.
Why the rules?
The rules help me help you keep yourself safe.
How do I find an image that is not protected under copyright?
If using Google search, this window is your friend you can access it by googling your image, then going to the Gear on the upper right hand corner of your screen which looks like this.
This little gear will be your friend from the day you start browsing the internet for creative commons images. Under this you will go to advanced image search, as you can see, i am trying to get an image of creative commons, however we don't know what i can use yet, Under everything we can see the usage rights. If we click on the blue hyperlink text, it takes us to a page which describes which images you can use, and what you have to attribute them to. to the right of that hyperlink you can scroll through and see what you would like to have for the copyright law.
But Alex, how do I find things when I am NOT using Google?
There are other ways to find images when you're not using Google that are similar to the Google engine, you need to do some digging, and usually it is under some sort of "advanced" settings tab. These "Advanced" settings can seem overwhelming, but you shouldn't be intimidated, let's go to a page that i have never been to before... which is Bing Image search.
Here is the homepage for Bing
Confused? that's alright, I am too.What i see on the page is at the top i can see what that i can search for videos, images, maps, news, more (and if I put my mouse over it I can see that I can search for travel, and other items.), and even view my search history.
Down below, we can see the "Newsworthy News" section of Bing, a good place to search for news if you're looking for some current events.
What we're going to look for is "Cats" because I love cats, and we're going to search for works which are not protected under copyright to its full extent.
You can search for cat images one of two ways, one, you can type in cats and then click on images, or you can click on images and then type cats.
If we do, we get a page which looks like this.
See the Circled area? That is the one that we need called "License"
This, if we click on it will give us the magic "Copyright" button that we are looking for. Simple enough to click on it, and then click on "Free to Share and use"
What we need to remember, though is to give credit where credit is due, whether we give them credit within the article, or we attach a hyperlink, we need to make sure that we are protecting the artist who took the pictures of these cute kitties.
