WordCast

Be Legal! Find Creative Commons Photos and Images For Your Blog Posts

By Jonathan Bailey, posted Jan 19 2010 at 3:00 pm | View Comments

It’s a simple fact that blog posts with images look better and get more attention than those without them. They are easier on the eyes, attract readers and stand out when users are glancing through their RSS feeds.

However, it is important to make sure that your images come from a legal source. Failure to obtain properly-licensed images can lead to many different headaches including takedowns which can hurt your blog, legal threats and, in drastic cases, lawsuits. This is why you should never just pluck images from a Google Image Search without first asking permission.

The good news is that there is help. Creative Commons provides a set of licenses that
creators can apply to their works to allow others to reuse it. Many
have done so and CC-licensed work is an easy way to get images for
your blog without headaches. Best of all, there are tools that make it
both easy and free, here is just five of the most important ones.

  1. PhotoDropper: PhotoDropper is a WordPress plugin that you install and it searches Flickr for CC-licensed images that you can use and embeds them for you, complete with proper attribution and license compliance.
  2. WikiMedia Commons: With a library of over 5 million freely useable images, Wikimedia Commons is a great destination for finding images under CC and other licenses (including GPL and public domain). Though it requires more skill to use WIkimedia works in most cases since there is no one-click embedding, the library itself makes this a worthwhile destination.
  3. Google Advanced Image Search: Google image search by itself returns images under full copyright and those you can reuse together. However, by selecting an appropriate license on their “Advanced Search” page, you can narrow the images down to just the ones you can use.
  4. Yahoo CC Search: Similar to Google, Yahoo! also has a very powerful CC search though it is not as powerful for finding images. Still can be a valuable resource in some cases.
  5. Flickr Creative Commons: Finally, if you wish to search Flickr directly for CC-licensed photos you can do so here. Though PhotoDropper does much the same thing, you can use this method to save images if you wish to host them yourself.

However, do not assume that a CC license grants automatic permission to use the work as you see fit. You first have to make sure that your use is in compliance with the license, especially in terms of commercial use, and that you complete the license itself.  (Check out this article on my PlagiarismToday site for more information.)

Also, remember that CC is a copyright license only and if there are recognizable people in the photo they may have rights to their image that are separate.

In the end, though, if you respect the terms of the license and comply with it to the best of your ability, you will be doing both yourself and the artist a favor. You’ll be avoiding the headaches of a potential lawsuit and they will be getting credit and linkage for your use.

It’s a true win-win situation.

For more content theft and copyright news and help, check out WordCast’s Copyright 2.0 Show which Jonathan cohosts with Patrick O’Keefe.

  • Hey Jonathan!

    This solves one of the big problems for the blogger: how to illustrate those carefully-crafted paragraphs.

    I absolutely adore the WordCast podcasts because you have this near-alchemic way of finding stuff I need. Or I didn't KNOW I needed, but instantly find a way to build it into my strategy.

    Another great place to look for free images is http://www.sxc.hu/ - sign up and check it out. It's a great gig by Getty Images for those of us who don't want to, or can't, spend $$$ on eye candy.
  • Thanks for this post Jonathan. I must admit that I find it quite difficult to find good sources for pictures and other medias for my site that I know it's ok to use them. This sure is going to point me in the right direction.
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