Copyright & The Web - a handout about staying legal when using pictures, audio, and video on the Web.

FreeFoto.com has a number of pictures you can use for free. But, they do have a few rules:

• The pictures are only available free for your own personal, noncommercial use and test or sample use, including comps and layouts.
• You must credit the FreeFoto.com web site on your home page. If you use one of the full screen images you must place a hypertext link with the line Supplied by FreeFoto.com in a conspicuous place. We also ask that you add a (c) FreeFoto.com to the image alt tag.
• You MAY NOT use the images to create your own photo gallery web site.

US Government Images - You can also download pictures from the US Government. According to the government, most of these images and graphics are available for use in the public domain; they may be used and reproduced without permission or fee. However, some images may be protected by license. Therefore we recommend you thoroughly read the disclaimers on each site before use.

Creative Commons - At Creative Commons you can find links to free images, audio, and video, some of which you can use of your Web site. But before you download anything, be sure to check the license assigned to each item. Creative Commons has created a licensing system by which authors can make material for use, but with restrictions. You need to check the license to see what type of restrictions apply to a specific item. Sometimes you can use the work as you like, as long as you provide proper attribution - other times you face restrictions on how you use the work. Its your responsibility to make sure you're not infringing on the authors' rights - they are making the work available to you, but are not giving up their copyrights.

Stock.xchng (sxc.hu) - Stock.xchng allows you to download images for free, as well as upload pictures for others to use. When downloading an image be sure to read the "image license" and check the "restrictions" column right below the picture. Thanks to Adam Green for providing this link

Free Photo Editing Program - Want to edit photos on your home computer and don't want to pay the big bucks for Photoshop? Try GIMP, an open source photo editing program. Thanks to Rachel McDermott for suggesting the program.

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