Keir Thomas explains the rules of copyright and how to legally find and use free images, audio and movie files for your projects
To paraphrase the Nicole Kidman in the movie To Die For, 'You aren't really anybody if you're not on the internet.'
The days of people wanting their own homepage have perhaps disappeared down the drainpipe of history, but they've been replaced by a desire to create things bigger in scope - a YouTube video, perhaps, or a PDF offered for download. You might wonder where you can find pictures, music and video clips to use to give everything a bit more pizazz. These are plentiful across the internet, of course, but whether you can freely use them is another matter.
You need to consider copyright and the licensing terms of the item. If you ignore these basic hurdles you can very easily find yourself taking a nasty fall.
In other words, unless you know how copyright and licensing works, then you won't know what's legal for you to use in your creations. So excuse us if in this feature we first enroll you in a brief copyright lesson. Don't worry - we keep it simple.
Copyright For Beginners
On the face of it copyright is blisteringly straightforward. Most items created by a person or business (images, videos and audio, for example) are copyrighted. The only exception is when the copyright has expired. But that really is all there is to it. Things like Creative Commons licences, discussed below, build on this principle, but they don't take it away.
The date until copyright expires varies from country to country but here in the UK it currently lasts for an author's lifetime, plus 50 or 70 years (see goo.gl/hnHlq7 for specifics). Because some countries have shorter terms than this, strange situations arise such as with the works of George Orwell, whose novels are still covered by copyright in most countries, but not in Australia, where his books can be freely downloaded (see the University of Adelaide's note at goo.gl/ZPCHdR).
However, copyright applies worldwide. It's recognised automatically within any country that's signed up to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a part of the United Nations that enforces the Berne Convention. In other words, that's every major country. If you create something in the UK, then in the US the copyright is recognised automatically - and vice versa.
As a UK citizen, anything you create is automatically copyrighted. Scribble a smiley face on a Post It note, and that image is your copyright, automatically. Write a poem about trees in the breeze, and it's your copyright from the instant the ink leaves the pen.
Misconceptions
This brings us to the first popular misconception about copyright, which is that items aren't copyright unless there's a brief sentence saying so - '© 2015 John Smith,' for example. Nope. Copyright is automatic, and there's no strict need for this message. Always assume everything you encounter is copyrighted.
The second misconception is that stuff on the internet is automatically in the public domain. Even certain Princess Di-obsessed newspapers have been known to skid on the banana of this mistruth, which perhaps arises through a misunderstanding of what constitutes 'publaic domain'. In fact, it doesn't have much of a legal basis but is widely understood to mean items whose copyright has expired. Examples include old novels found at the Gutenberg ebook site, or movies from the early part of the 20th century. Arguably the concept can be extended to items for which the creator simply isn't around to enforce their copyright - a novel whose author has died and whose publisher disappeared without transferring the rights, or an old computer game for which the company has gone bust and whose assets weren't bought by another organisation. This can be very shaky ground, however, as any retro gaming enthusiast will tell you.
Some people have excused the theft of images, videos and audio by arguing that the internet is public and also a domain where creative works can be found, so therefore anything found on the internet is public domain. This just isn't true and has led to gainful employment for many lawyers - although typically the first course of action is a simple cease and desist email from the copyright holder requesting removal.
The third copyright misconception is what might be called The YouTube Fallacy. If you use a clip from a Disney cartoon and add © Disney at the beginning or end, that doesn't automatically provide permission to use that item. Acknowledging copyright means nothing. The copyright holder must give you explicit permission before you use stuff.
A final misconception about copyright is that items created trivially (snapshots of an individual, for example, or a 30-second YouTube video captured on a mobile phone) aren't covered by copyright. There really isn't a hammer big enough to bash home the truth that everything is covered by copyright, regardless of how it was created, who created it or how easy (or complicated!) it was to create it.
Exceptions
If you want to use something online, then you must track down the copyright holder and get permission. This permission is usually granted via a licence agreement, and this usually, although not always, involves payment of a fee, known as a royalty.
Sometimes copyright material is used online without payment with the claim it's fair use. This is a clause in US copyright law that allows items to be used without the copyright holder's permission, provided it's for education purposes, parody, criticism or a few other explicitly named undertakings. Quite how fair use can be used is a minefield, but it's one that's been successfully mapped by lawyers. However, it far from covers all appropriated usage of copyright material. Nowhere near.
Here in the UK, we've simultaneously suffered from two misconceptions regarding fair use. The first is that the US laws apply to us too if we put stuff on the internet. They don't. If you're sitting in the UK when you upload a copyrighted video to your .com website that's located on a US server, then the laws of the UK take precedence - although you could also get sued in the US courts in addition!
British copyright law does have a little known 'fair dealing' clause that allows for copyright exceptions when it comes to criticism, reporting of current events and study. There are all kinds of limitations and provisos that mean fair dealing is a hazy shade of its American equivalent and virtually meaningless for most of us - which is why you might be learning about it for the first time here.
It's not all frowny emoticons. Last year, UK law was amended to clearly extend fair dealing to caricature, parody or pastiche. This was hailed by many as a necessary loosening of otherwise strict copyright laws in the internet age and has led to the legitimisation of satirists such as Cassette Boy, who creates hugely popular video montages from news clips.
Copyleft
As mentioned, if you create an item and want to make money from it, then you'll probably have to license it to others via a legal contract, in return for payments called royalties. (Facebook, Instagram et al are an exception - look at the terms and conditions and you'll find that you automatically license whatever you upload or type into those services for worldwide distribution, free of charge and forever.)
However, the rise of computing has subverted the idea of licensing content and brought about so-called copyleft licences, such as the Creative Commons licences, or open source/free software licences used for computer software such as the GNU Public Licence (GPL). In this case the licence makes the item available for the world at large to build on or to use however they wish, without charge. The latter perhaps comes closest to what most people erroneously understand as public domain, as mentioned earlier. However, the items are still copyrighted even if they're licenced as copyleft. It's just that the creator has contractually made the item free for use. Crucially, they haven't 'given up' their copyright.
Although no money typically changes hands for use of copyleft items, you pay a price by meeting the requirements of the copyleft licence terms. For things other than software. Creative Commons (CC) licences are the most popular, and there are different versions with three components, any of which might be included in a particular licence agreement.
The first component relates to whether the item is to be used commercially - that is, you want to either make money from something that includes the item or use it as part of a larger commercial enterprise such as on the website of your business. An example of non-commercial use would be using the item in a church newsletter that the clergy gives away or even sells but that is from an enterprise isn't related to commerce in the usual sense.
Put simply, some people who create items licenced with CC just don't want others to make money using them although often you can contact the person directly to arrange your own terms if you really want to use the item commercially.
The second factor is whether you need to provide a credit for the creator of the item, which is to say, attribution. If attribution is required, it's usually no big deal, but it'll require you to add a caption to any CC-licensed photo you use or a credit sequence to a video.
The third factor is whether you're going to take the item and use it unmodified (placing a CC-licenced picture on your website, for example) or whether you're going to create something new based on that item. You might Photoshop an image of a horse to make it look like a unicorn, for example. This is referred to as creating a derivative.
To cut short a potentially nebulous explanation, the best kind of CC licence if you simply want image, sound or video files for a project is CC0 - commonly referred to as 'no rights reserved.' The item still has copyright applied to it (everything always does!), but with the CC0 licence the creator waives all typical copyright requirements. There's not even any need to provide attribution. You just grab the item, use it and forget about it.
How To Search
Another way to describe CC0 stuff is to call it royalty free, and this is important because it forms the basis of fruitful online searches if you want free images, audio and video. In fact, there are a number of search terms that are useful:
CC0
CC BY
CC BY-SA
Royalty free
Labelled for reuse
As for where to search, most people are familiar with the likes of Google Image Search (images.google.com), which lets you search specifically for images. Just add in one of the phrases above, alongside the name of what you require: 'oak tree cc0', for example, or 'unicorn royalty free'. For video you can use video.google.com, although beware that results tend to be biased towards Google's own YouTube platform, and to download items you'll probably need to use a dedicated downloader extension like Video Downloader Professional: goo.gl/Gud0AD.
When you find a result you like, visit the site and make sure that it is indeed licensed in an acceptable way. Tread carefully unless the terms are explicitly stated. If the item is to be used for a print publication or DVD pressing that it would be costly to redo, then to ensure certainty in the licensing terms you might use a reverse image search engine like TinEye (tineye.com). This lets you input an image to search for, rather than text, and will let you ensure the image isn't listed for sale on commercial stock media sites like istock.com. Indeed, if you want belts-and-braces confidence, then you might even choose to search sites like iStock using the original term to see if the item surfaces.
Unfortunately, because of the misunderstandings of what constitutes copyright, as discussed earlier, it's not uncommon for people to offer an item free for use without realising they shouldn't do so. Some people offer items with the belief that if the item is restrictively copyrighted, then it's down to the copyright holder to get in touch and tell them so, in which event they'll remove it. Once again, this is a fallacy - albeit an effective way of collating online content -but it's dangerous for those who use materials the site offers.
Few people are familiar with Google's advanced search page (google.com/advanced_search) which, among other things, lets you filter by usage rights, and the options essentially mirror the Creative Commons licence options.
Google isn't the only search in town, of course, and most major search engines have their own media-finding offshoots - uk.images.search.yahoo.com, for example. Bing has its own image search too but, in typical Microsoft fashion, we can't provide a link. Just visit bing.com and click the Images link at the top of the screen.
Dedicated Search Engines
Needless to say, the desire to track down CC0 and royalty-free stuff is widespread, and several dedicated sites have arisen to cater for any requirement - image, audio, video and more. There's also a desire to track down professional-level material - high-res photography, for example or 1080p video files that are offered for easy download and don't need to be ripped. Most search engines discussed previously are designed for casual users who don't really care about such issues.
The most useful solution in both cases is the official Creative Commons search engine: search.creativecommons.org. This is actually a meta-engine that searches other sites, which you can choose between, and therefore it's also ideal to learn of sites that collate free materials.
Fagan Finder (faganfinder.com) is another meta-engine that lets you search specifically for images, video, audio and more (just like the link at the top of the screen) and again lists quite a few sites that you might choose to bookmark. Unfortunately, it has no filter to find specifically free-to-use items, so you'll need to dig down into the results to check for yourself.
FindSounds (findsounds.com) focuses specifically on audio and lets you specify quality settings, such as the bit resolution and sample rate. SoundCloud is arguably the biggest collection of audio online, although only a fraction is free. However, it provides a useful link to sites where royalty-free audio can be found: goo.gl/xZlOvO.
It isn't just audio, pictures and video that are covered by copyleft licenses. You might want to find an interesting font to use in your project, and if so, the same search skills described above apply, although because fonts are often licenced under software licences like GPL or MIT, you might choose to add in those terms instead. Do be careful, though - it's extremely common for people to create copies of commercial font files but simply change the name and/ or metadata within the font. Organisations that create commercial fonts can be ferocious in enforcing copyright. Additionally, some people create new font designs from scratch that are essentially clones of existing commercial fonts. The legal situation here is a little less certain, but you could still get into trouble. Be aware too that fonts can have strange licensing terms that mean they can be used on screen but not for printing or embedding with PDFs. A Microsoft technical note explains how you can view this information: goo.gl/F7WtvN.
PixaBay (pixabay.com)
Free high-quality images
MorgueFile (morguefile.com)
Free high-resolution images
Free Images (freeimages.com)
Free stock images
Online Logo Maker (onlinelogomaker.com)
Generate your own free logo from template designs
British Film Council Archives (film.britishcouncil.org/resources/archives/)
Links to archive video clips and more
KFTV (kftv.com/category/stock-footage-libraries/country/uk)
Links to stock video footage
BBC Motion Gallery (gettyimages.co.uk/bbcmotiongallery)
Clips offered via the BBC for free online use
BBC Worldwide Learning (bbcworldwidelearning.com)
Clips offered by the BBC for educational purposes
Archive.org (archive.org/details/audio)
Archive.org's collection of free audio files, including contemporary material
SoundCloud (soundcloud.com)
Arguably the biggest collection of audio and music online
Free Stock Music (freestockmusic.com)
Free production-quality music for use in projects
Google Fonts (google.com/fonts)
Open source fonts created by Google
Open Font Library (openfontlibrary.org)
A library of open source fonts
Envato (market.envato.com)
Digital content offered from a variety of sites, some free, with a free number of commercially sold items each month once you sign up