Posting images and videos are things that many people do in in their day to day life. People post images on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites, but what some people don’t think about while doing it is that they might be braking copyright laws. Not every photo that you see on google can be used to post on blogs and other social media platforms. When we use copyright material without the authorization of the author can end up on you committing copyright infringement. Using photos from the web are more complex then you think, just putting the link to where you get the photo is not enough.

Ways to prevent Copyrights Infringement

One way that you can prevent copyrights infringement is by using websites that have royalty free images. A great website that you can use is Pexels. Another way is by buying the rights to images, but this can become expensive really quick. When using images from the internet keep in mind that not all images you see can be used. Another way to prevent copyrights infringements is by using Creative Commons.

What Are Creative Commons

Creative Commons is an organization that was founded in 2001. This organization provides content that is free to use for blogs, websites and other things. This is called Creative Commons licenses. People can post their work in Creative Commons if they want others to use it without your permission. This type of licenses are used for books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs, audio and visual recordings.

Creative Commons Websites for Images

• Multicolr Search Lab
• Compfight
• Pixabay
• Unsplash
• Openclipart

Image Attribution

When using images from a website that gives you permission to use them you need to make sure that the original author is attributed in the site that you used. The attribution can be added at the bottom of the image, it also can be added at the end of the post. When attributing the author what you should include is the copyright information and a link to the photo and the place that you got it from. If you want an easy way to attribute the image you can use websites that help you with it.

Remember

Just because you find it on google it does not mean that you can use it. You need to put in the work and find websites that allow you to use their images, but never forget to ATTRIBUTE the author of the images that you are using.

Example of Attribution