Ethical Images and Where to Find Them

Have you ever been annoyed with copyright? Maybe you've been doing an assignment for school and have to scour the depths of a source to find the proper procedure for using a picture or a quote. Or maybe you worked tirelessly to post a creative and funny video on YouTube only to have it ripped down thanks to a company or business who feels like you violated their copyright. 

Wouldn't life be easier if we could all just use whatever academic or creative work we wanted when we wanted it? Actually no, that would be awful.

Copyright exists for a reason. It protects the authors intellectual property. Without this, authors would have a very hard time making a living off there work. It would be like cooking dinner every night only to have complete strangers barge into your house and eat all your food.

Regardless, Copyright isn't going anywhere so we'd better learn to deal with it. But fret not, Copyright laws are fair and there are plenty of ways to use many different classes of work without stepping on any toes. What I'm talking about is, of course, Creative Commons.

 As their website states,"Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools." by using creative commons and other similar search engines you can find a smorgasbord of free images, music, and videos that have very limited copyright restrictions. The only catch is you generally have to mention who the original author is.

For example, check out the following images I found on Google Images using Creative Commons. These are all images I plan to use later for a project.

When determining whether or not you can use a work it's best to ask yourself four questions.

1. Why are you using it?
2. What is the nature of it? Is it a fact or an idea or more of a creative piece. 
3. How much of it do you plan to use?
4. Will you harm the potential market for the author?  

When I used Google images, I filtered for images release to the public for "noncommercial reuse." This mean's that I am permitted to use these images as is as long I do not intend to make any money off of them. Given that all the above images will be placed into this private blog, which will likely not circulate outside of my classroom, and later be modified for use in a slidecast, I am in no way violating copyright. Besides the fact that I am using them for educational purposes, which warrants a certain amount of fair use to begin with, all these images were listed in creative commons as available for reuse.

Hopefully you found some of this information helpful. Thanks for reading!