Quality media, especially colourful images, make a blog attractive on the very first look, and encourage readers to take a closer look and actually taste the contents. Initially I was unsure of how to do this without the risk of infringing on somebody else’s copyright. I also couldn’t find many resources on the net that helped make this process easier. So, finally when I understand the process thoroughly, and in fact find it to be quite simple, I think it would be a good idea to share it.
Even before we start looking at using a licensed image, we need to understand the different licensing types and what they require of us when using content licensed under it. When in doubt, the thumb rule is to not use that image and find another one that has unambiguous licensing terms. Let’s start with images that are completely free to use, and then progressively move on to those that have more restricting terms.
There are a few images out there (yeah, not many) that are deemed to be in the public domain, and which we are free to use as we please – as is, modified versions, and for commercial purposes. Examples include works by authors long gone, or those that have been explicitly released into the public domain. For example, the original Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is in the public domain, and so are most of the digitally enhanced or modified versions such as this one. To remove any doubt, you’d see a notice as shown below on the page linked to here.
Works in public domain, while the easiest and most flexible to use, are hard to find. In a vast majority of cases, media that we can share/reuse with or without modification are found licensed under Creative Commons license. Even under creative commons, there are different levels of restriction. All of these (except the one called CC0, which is essentially the same as being in public domain) require that you attribute the work to the copyright owner in the way they specified. This term is called Attribution, and is the most basic condition under Creative Commons. The other conditions, which could vary from specific content to another, are best understood by looking at the options they give when beginning to license a work.
As can be seen, the author might prevent you from using the work for commercial purposes. This would result in a license that specifies NonCommercial. There are also versions of the license that puts certain conditions on making modifications to the work (such as having to distribute the modified work under the same license), and those that do not allow making derivatives at all. It is interesting to explore the different types of resulting licenses on the creative commons license page. So once we know what we want to do with the image, we can identify the license types that would suit our purpose.
The next step is to find images (or other media) that are licensed as per the terms acceptable to us. Here again, the best place I have found is the creative commons search, though Google also provides the feature of searching based on license type. The CC search interface gives you a convenient way to search several online content stores such as Flickr and Wikimedia commons that are host to much of the free to use media available on the internet.
On this interface, we select where we want to search and specify the acceptable licensing terms. To give an example here, I searched for images of Indian flag that can be modified and used for commercial purposes on Flickr. In the search results, I selected one of the images. On this detail page, there is a link to the license under which the image is released. On Flickr (as well as on other sites such as Wikimedia commons), there’s an easy way to get the html code for using this image in our own blog. Using this code will automatically take care of meeting the license requirements.
Wikimedia commons also gives you a similar option of copying the HTML code. Copy this code into the HTML editor of your browser, and you’re done. So, it is not really difficult to use good images from good people who have permitted the use of their images, in the way they have prescribed – thus making your blog lively while respecting others’ rights and privileges.
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