Thing 19: The Legal Side of Things

Copyright restrictions have given me more grey hairs than I care to think about and I really appreciated this Thing which was well written and very informative.  In fact, I'd love a 23 Things course on copyright issues alone!!!  We've often had to grapple with this problem at work and let me tell you there is no thornier or more dangerous ground than copyright law.  It is also an area on which it is very difficult to find clarity as copyright regulations vary not only from country to country but between different forms or works.  For example, depending on the country, copyright length can extend from 0 to 100 years from the death of the creator.  Copyright can also be extended and there is even such a thing as perpetual copyright although thankfully this is extremely rare.

Fair use is another term which is as clear as mud.  There is no clear definition as to what exactly is meant by it and again regulations vary wildly from country to country.  Some copyright owners will haul you into court even in circumstances where the fair use defense would probably succeed with the aim of frightening you badly enough to stop you from using their works for free.  Nice.

Then there is the nightmare of images posted on the Internet.  Let us assume that you find a photograph of a nineteenth-century watercolour uploaded by an art gallery which you want to use on your blog.  The watercolour is well out of copyright and you think you are good to go.  You are not, because the art gallery holds copyright of the photograph they have taken of the out-of-copyright watercolour.  It's enough to give you a splitting headache.

In trying to source "safe" images from the Internet, Creative Commons is a great option.  Some large organisations such as the Imperial War Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in the UK also provide creative licences as long as users adhere to certain basic rules.  However  some websites with allegedly free content should be approached with caution.  One of them is Wikimedia Commons, which does contain images that clearly are covered by copyright but are touted as being freely available.  To be fair, they do flag up questionable content uploaded by contributors, one just has to be vigilant enough to spot it before using the source.

When I first began this course I didn't even think of using images to illustrate my blogs because frankly copyright issues frighten me witless.  After a few dull and colourless blogs I changed my mind and began to search for images guaranteed to be in the public domain or covered by a Creative Commons licence.  Thankfully Google allows you to search for images by their usage rights which saves a lot of grief and trouble.  My rule of thumb is that if your'e not sure about the copyright status of something, stay well away from it and if you are sure, always, always cite your source.  This in fact is a rule I have sadly broken myself as I have provided no source details for any of the images that I've used on my blogs.

To practice what I preach, here are the citations for the two images I've used:

Image 1: "Creative Commons Headache" by openDemocracy licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Image 2: This open Clipart image is from Pixabay and is in the public domain with no attribution required.  However, for those who want to source the image you can find it by following this link: https://pixabay.com/p-156107/?no_redirect