Skip to Main Content

Multimedia Resources: Copyright

Images, Movies, and other Graphics

Copyright and Images

Audio, graphics, and video can be found in multiple places!  This guide is not meant to be exhaustive, but to highlight a few key resources that we find helpful.  Please let us know what your media needs are for your class, presentation, or a clinical setting and we can provide more specific guidance on which DMU or freely available resource would be most appropriate for your needs.

Basic Terms to Understand

Copyright

The protection given to any created image or work from being copied or distributed without permission. All images are immediately given copyright to the creator when the image is created.

-TheVisualCommunicationGuy.com

Fair Use

The legal right to use copyrighted images as long as the images are used for educational, research, or personal use or as long as the image benefits the public good in some way.

 

Ask Yourself the Fair Use Questions:

  1. Are you using the image for personal, non-profit, educational, research, or scholarly purposed AND are you using the image sparingly, only for limited purposes?
  2. Are you transforming or repurposing the image to create a new purpose or meaning?
  3. Are you publishing the image in a fact-based context or publication that benefits the public as a whole (such as in a news source where it is important that people see the image)?
  4. Would it be considered impossible to obtain permission from the original source?
  5. Will you be using the image for personal or commercial gain?

If you answered "No" to all the fair use questions, the use of your image would most likely be considered for personal or commercial gain.)

 

-TheVisualCommunicationGuy.com

Creative Commons

Images that are copyrighted but that the creator has put provisions on their use. A creative commons license might stipulate, for example, that an image can be used as long as it isn't modified in any way.

-TheVisualCommunicationGuy.com

Public Domain

Images that no longer have copyright restrictions either because the creator willingly relinquished their copyright or because the creator is dead AND no one owns the copyright.

-TheVisualCommunicationGuy.com