Marine Botany: Using Images Responsibly

Want to use images you found on the web in your blog post, website, or presentation slides? While information on the web is publicly viewable, it is often not permissible to use it yourself. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) protects the creator and/or owner of copyrighted information.

Fair Use is a clause in copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 107 (2016)) that outlines criteria for the acceptable use of copyrighted material. It is not definitive, so it is open to interpretation. This expansion of the legal verbiage may serve as a useful guide.

However, one of the best ways to use images legally is to use those that include a generous license for you to use them. A common form of licensing is Creative Commons.

e.g. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Creative Commons License Term Abbreviations

CC = Creative Commons License declaration

BY = Attribution required - you must attribute the image to the creator

NC = Non-commercial use only - you cannot use the image in a money-making context

ND = No derivative works permissible - you cannot alter the image in any way, including resizing or cropping

SA = Share Alike (not included in above example) – if you create derivatives and/or redistribute, you must use the identical CC license used by the creator

2.0 = License version 2.0

The following sources of images make license criteria very clear:
 

• Pixabay Images published with a Pixabay license, allowing very liberal terms of use
• Creative Commons image search tool Search a variety of search engines, specifying some of the license terms you want
• Google Image Advanced Search Allows you to filter by usage rights/license type
• Flickr Creative Commons
• Flickr Commons
• Wikimedia Commons
• Federal publications/media are usually public domain. Examples of federal sites are NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and Environmental Protection Agency. There are exceptions to the public domain criteria, and copyrighted images will normally have a copyright statement under them.

To correctly use a licensed image, use the criteria specified in the license. An appropriate use of a Creative Commons licensed image is:

"Sargassum sp." by Ria Tan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Found on Flickr, the license indicator and link for this image is

The attribution above consists of:

1. Title of the image, as specified by the creator (if no title exists, use [untitled]). The title is linked to the image location on Flickr
2. Creator of the image, which may be a real name or a handle. The creator name is linked to the creator's profile on Flickr
3. License with which the image is published. The license title is linked to the license page on Flickr

If you adapted the image (if the license permits it) it is also appropriate, sometimes required, to specify that. Use the format:

[Image Title] by [Creator], used under [License] / Cropped from original

Some licenses, such as CC0 and Pixabay do not require attribution at all. However, it is both a best practice and polite to acknowledge the image source by modeling the above example. It may help somebody else use this and other images in a responsible manner.