Figuring Out Whether an Image Can be Used Online

Genealogists love images. Genealogy bloggers love them even more. But it isn't always easy to figure out if an image found online is okay to use without breaking the law.

How do we know if  an image is copyright? Is it public domain? So many questions that are sometimes hard to figure out the answer to.

LifeHacker has made it easier for us. They've published a chart from Curtis Newbold, The Visual Communication Guy, that explains copyright, fair use, creative commons, and public domain.

Learn more at Follow This Chart to Know If You Can Use an Image from the Internet

Monday Musings: Copyright and Plagiarism

A rather lively discussion of Copyright went on yesterday in a Facebook group. Sadly it degenerated into a couple of participants engaging in name-calling and emotional tirades. But the topic is important and I have been thinking about it more this morning.


One the one side were those who insisted that if you put something online (a family tree, an article, a photo) you must be prepared for it to be taken and used without your permission. 

A few declared that if we don't want our work taken then don't put it online. Then there were those who mistakenly thought that as long as the item(s) taken were not being sold or used to make money in some way, it was okay.

Those groups are wrong. We should not simply shrug our shoulders and ignore copyright violations. Anything original online is immediately under copyright and deserves our protection. That's where education comes in. Many times people violate copyright because they truly do not understand how the internet works and what the copyright laws are. 

In response to the suggestion that if we don't want our work taken, don't put it online -  if we independent webmasters stopped putting articles, photos, and data collections online, all the free websites and blogs would quickly disappear. 

As for the misconception that as long as the stolen work is not being used to profit the person who took it without permission, it does not matter what the intent is. Taking published work without permission violates copyright.

Definitions

There seemed to be confusion over copyright vs plagiarism vs fair use. Here are some definitions that were posted during the discussion yesterday

Definition of plagiarism: copying the work of someone else and publishing it as your own without permission and without crediting the work to the author. [Cyndi Ingle on https://www.facebook.com/groups/17834741205/ ]

Definition of fair use: purposely gray area in copyright law. Fair use includes using something for purely educational purposes or for review or for satire. But the *amount* of something that can be copied and called fair use is purposely vague. It depends on a case by case basis. [Cyndi Ingle on https://www.facebook.com/groups/17834741205/]

and the definition of copyright from the Merriam-Webster dictionary

Copyright:  the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work) 

Examples

Basically it means if I write and publish an article on my blog or my website, and you copy it without my permission and republish it elsewhere, you violated my copyright. It does not matter whether or not you gave attribution to me as the author, it's still a copyright violation. 

If you take a paragraph or a few sentences from my original article and use them in a new article you are writing that is fair use. But if you neglect to cite me as the original author of those words, it's plagiarism

How to Play Fair and Stay Out of Trouble

It's wise to always read a website's Terms of Use or Copyright Statement/Notice to find out what the restrictions (if any) are on items on that specific site. Big companies such as Ancestry.com have very specific Terms of Use that must be followed by anyone using the site. Smaller websites, such as my Olive Tree Genealogy, usually have a Copyright Notice of some kind that explains what the restrictions are for copying items on the site.

Suggested Reading

Cyndi's List has quite a few links related to Copyright Laws and Issues at http://www.cyndislist.com/ip/