Just because you can download an image doesn’t mean you can use it! An image may be protected by copyright laws. Similar to a patent, a copyright is a legal tool for preserving control over the use of a creative work. Books, poems, music recordings and compositions, photographs, paintings, sculptures, radio and television broadcasts, films, and even dances can be copyrighted. The Artist Formerly Known As Prince even had his symbolic name, “Love Symbol #2”, protected by copyright law.
England initiated the copyright laws familiar to today’s citizens as the Statute of Anne (1709). By the 1700s, the widespread use of the printing press and an increase in literacy rates resulted in printers commonly reprinting texts without crediting their rightful authors or paying them. The Statute of Anne gave the author the exclusive right to a work for a fixed period of time. Copyright durations vary by nation. In the United States, the length of a copyright used to be the life of an author plus 50 years; on the 50th year after the death of an author, their works would be released into the public domain. For works created by corporations, the length was 75 years from the date of publication.
In 1998 congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended copyright by 20 years. This law was authored by a musical-entertainer-turned-Congressman and was heavily lobbied by the media industry. The act became known as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” as Disney lobbied extensively to ensure that the law reached back just far enough to protect their copyright over Mickey Mouse.
Public Domain images have no licensing restrictions. An image automatically enters the Public Domain when a copyright expires. Public domain is currently under attack, as media corporations struggle to control their monopolies. The irony is that copyright was introduced to protect authors from this type of monopolistic power. An image is protected by copyright unless:
- the use qualifies as “fair use”
- the author declares it is part of the public domain
- the image is old enough that the copyright has expired
- the author licenses it under an alternative model
Several alternative licensing models exist, the most popular of which is a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons operates under the moniker “Some rights reserved” and offers a range of licenses with subtle degrees of control over whether derivative works and for-profit uses are allowed. Wikimedia Commons, and Flickr focus partially or exclusively on public domain or Creative Commons licensed images.
To find out more about Free Culture, Public Domain, and the Creative Commons, visit CreativeCommons.org, or lessig.org. Lawrence Lessig is one of the founders of Creative Commons and the Free Culture movement.