Image Copyright 101: A Guide to Online Image Copyright and Fair Usage
We’re living in a highly visual world that feeds off images and graphics.
They’re everywhere—social media, television, streaming, websites, in books, magazines—and they’re helping to break up content to make it more interesting to look at, or to put special emphasis on a message. However, with the proliferation of social media and website use, a major concern has appeared—online image copyright.
For photographers, filmmakers, streamers, and anyone else creating visual content, this is an important issue. Publicly posting and sharing your content online does not mean it belongs to everyone. Nor that it can simply be shared, used, or distributed without your permission.
Many people will happily do a quick Google search for the type of image they want and pop it up onto their website or their social media profile. It’s not so bad in a personal capacity. But if businesses or brands do this as part of their marketing, it can be a major problem. This is because those images belong to someone (potentially you!) and this person holds the right to the usage of that image.
The Definition Of Copyright
Copyright is connected to intellectual property laws all over the world.
In the US, the Copyright Office carefully protects the rights of the person who created a specific piece of work. Copyright generally covers artistic works, such as novels, scripts, paintings, photographs, drawings, poems, songs, and movies. It also covers architecture and computer software.
The law states that copyright applies to your work the moment you create it. You don’t have to do anything to have a copyright on your work. However, you may need to have something in place to prove that you created it if a dispute arises later on.
One way to do this is to register your work with the US Copyright Office. But this could be quite a big task if you want to register each image you take or create.
Your Rights As A Content Creator:
Your work is automatically covered by copyright regardless of whether or not you register it.
You can reproduce your work as often as you want and for whatever reason you want.
You’re allowed to create derivatives of this work in any way you see fit.
You can distribute your work however you choose—for free or for profit, or both.
You’re allowed to display or perform your work publicly, as long as it doesn’t infringe on any other laws around public displays.
What Does “Fair Usage” Mean?
Now that we’ve covered copyright, let’s look at fair usage.
This could be looked at as a minor loophole in copyright laws. However, it only works in certain and limited circumstances that are meant to benefit the public.
According to the Copyright Act in the US, Section 107 states that you can use images protected under copyright without paying for the use of them in these situations:
For reporting the news—It’s acceptable to have the Coca-Cola logo in the background of a news report because it happens to be on the street. It’s also acceptable to report on the latest work by an artist and show the work in a newspaper, blog post, or on television.
In research—If you are writing a scholarly paper on the work of a particular artist, you can make copies of the work and put versions of them into your paper.
For teaching—You can show your class examples of poetry, songs, photographs, and sculptures to teach them about the styles used and the influences. You can also reproduce these works of art (make photocopies) and hand them out to the class for study purposes.
For passing comments or reviews of the work—If you are reviewing a play, film, or another piece of artwork, you can use images or quotes from it in your published review.
The reason this type of usage is allowed under the Copyright Act in the US, and under other laws around the world, is because it is in the public interest.
If schools had to pay large sums of money to artists when trying to teach their students about particular movements or styles of work, it would bankrupt them. News channels and newspapers would never report on current events if they had to constantly worry about where they were recording, or what they were covering in terms of copyright.
Using Other People’s Images Correctly
As a content creator, copyright is something that you should always be aware of. It will protect your work and your rights, while also protecting the rights of other creators. This means that if you want to use images you haven't created in your online portfolio, social media, or as part of the film you’re making, you need to know what’s allowed, and how to use them legally.
Free Images
There are several online sources, such as Unsplash and Pixabay, where you can find images that are either completely free to use or that are royalty-free. The latter means you pay a once-off fee for the image and you can then use it again and again (you usually pay a subscription to the site to get as many downloads as you want).
Just be sure to read the terms of use on the website as some may require you to credit the website or the original creator of the image wherever you end up using it.
Stock Images
The other option is to pay for the rights to use the image for your particular use. Stock image websites like Shutterstock and Getty Images are prime examples of this. With these sites, you usually pay per image and the amount you pay will depend on the image quality you want to download and how you plan to put it to use.
Understanding how copyright and fair use works is important for anyone in visual arts. Not just for their work, but for the use of other artworks too. Plagiarism is not taken lightly in any creative field. Ensure you’re not guilty of it, and if you’re on the receiving end, address it, as the laws are clear cut.
Meet the Author, Carmen Docampo
With a background in photo editing and as a hobby photographer, Carmen writes for various photography outlets. She spends her free time enjoying the outdoors and discovering new hiking trails.