“Fitting in allows you to blend in with everyone else, but being different allows you to be yourself, to be unique and to be more creative.”
– Sonya Parker
The Deal With Copyrights
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, this is it. This is the week we get to talk about everyone’s favorite subject when it comes to web design– COPYRIGHT!
Okay, so I’m clearly being facetious here. However, while copyright laws can seem to be a complete and utter headache sometimes, it is really very important in protecting creator content. No one likes things being stolen from them, and that includes intellectual property, and things that you put time and effort into making, like pictures, audio, and video.
So, How do we Make it Copyright Friendly?
Well, my friends, I’m gonna tell you. It’s not as hard as it sounds, really. The best way to keep yourself out of trouble, is to do what I did and look for royalty free images, audio, and video online. There’s actually a surprising number of resources out there! For example, for this blog post, my images come from this awesome website here, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license, and provides TONS of royalty free images, like this one:
If you want to learn more about Creative Commons, you can check them out here.
Five Tips
So, as usual, here come some tips I’ve got for you:
- Choose Royalty Free Sources— there’s tons of them and they’re all really cool.
- Don’t Just Google Search an Image— that is a really fast way to get yourself into trouble.
- Know What You Can Use— get familiar with copyright law, and understand what’s under Fair Use, and what isn’t
- When in Doubt, Link it Out— try to source everything you can!
- Never Claim Something is Yours, When it Isn’t— it’s called plagiarism, folks. And it’s also called being a terrible human being, so like, don’t do it.
Well, everyone. I think that’s everything for this week! Catch you on the flip side!
Kaytlin's Blog 