10 questions before you use someone else’s work

Borrowing a photograph, a quotation or a song is an everyday creative decision. Answer all ten questions for yourself before you read the explanations. A habit you have never questioned can rest on a wrong assumption.

The ten questions

1. If an image is easy to download, do you think it is free to reuse?
2. Does giving the creator credit replace the need for permission?
3. Is a free or educational use automatically fair use?
4. Would using only a few seconds or a small percentage always be safe?
5. When you buy a copy or pay for a download, do you own the copyright?
6. If a story is old, are every translation, illustration, and recording of it free to use?
7. Do all Creative Commons licenses allow the same things?
8. If you change someone else's work enough, does it automatically become yours?
9. Does asking AI to make something remove the need to think about other people's rights?
10. If you have permission to use a photograph, can you use the person's face to advertise anything?

Once you have finished the ten questions, continue below to read the answers.

The internet makes finding something and using it feel like one motion: save an image, paste a quotation, choose a song, publish. Each answer below splits that motion into the separate decisions inside it and tells you what to check before you publish.

The answers

1. If an image is easy to download, do you think it is free to reuse?

No. Publicly available is not the same as licensed. A photographer may post an image so people see it, buy prints or license it; none of that lets you put it on a product. Unless an exception such as fair use applies, you need permission (a license) from the copyright owner, wherever you found the work. 1 A missing © notice does not make a work free: notice has been optional for works published on or after March 1, 1989. 1 A search engine found the image; it did not license it to you. Before you use it:

1. Look for a license or permission statement attached to that exact image, on the page where its creator published it.
2. Check the file's metadata, which can name the creator, the copyright owner or the licensing terms. 1
3. Search the Copyright Office's online records of registrations and transfers, which cover records from 1978 on. 114
4. If you still have no permission, contact the owner or the publisher and ask. 1

2. Does giving the creator credit replace the need for permission?

No. Credit tells your audience who made the work; permission decides whether you may use it at all. Under a license such as CC BY, credit is one of the conditions of the permission, not a replacement for it: you must keep the creator's name, the copyright notice, a reference to the license and a link to the material wherever the creator supplied them. 2 A filmmaker who credits a songwriter in the closing titles still needs permission to use the song. And once you have permission, give the credit you agreed to. Ask both questions in one message, "May I use it?" and "How should I credit you?", and include what the Copyright Office suggests: the title, the exact material you want, how you will use it, your audience and whether it will be sold. 1 Keep the reply in writing so you can show what was agreed.

3. Is a free or educational use automatically fair use?

No. Nonprofit education is one fact inside the first of four factors courts weigh together: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount used, and the effect on the market for the original. 3 Courts are more likely to find nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses fair, but not every such use is fair, and not every commercial use is unfair. 3 A free online library of entire current textbooks is a different case from a paid review that quotes a passage to examine its argument. "I am not making money" does not explain why you need this amount of this work. Write down what your audience will learn from the borrowed material and why you need that part of it; if you cannot, ask for permission. Only a federal court can decide whether a use is fair, and the Copyright Office recommends getting permission when in doubt. 11 If an owner objects to a use you believe is fair, have a copyright attorney assess your position before you reply.

4. Would using only a few seconds or a small percentage always be safe?

No. There is no rule that lets you use a set number of words, seconds or a percentage of a work. 311 Even a short excerpt can weigh against fair use if it is the heart of the work, and some courts have found use of an entire work fair. 3 A ten-second clip is not safe because it is ten seconds. In an analysis of a film shot, a brief clip has a direct explanatory purpose; the same clip in an unrelated advertisement does not. Judge the role of what you borrow along with its size, and take no more than that role needs.

5. When you buy a copy or pay for a download, do you own the copyright?

No. Owning a copy and owning the copyright are separate: selling a book, a print or even the original artwork does not by itself transfer the copyright. 4 A transfer of copyright ownership is valid only in a writing signed by the owner. 4 Someone who buys a poster can hang it, but cannot print new editions. Buying a stock image or subscribing to a service gets you the uses its license terms describe, and nothing more. Before you use a purchased file, read the license: which activities, audiences, formats and limits does it cover?

6. If a story is old, are every translation, illustration, and recording of it free to use?

No. A public-domain novel is free to adapt, but a recent translation, illustration or recording of it can have its own copyright. The copyright in a new version covers only the new material, does not extend the old work's term, and does not stop anyone else from making their own version of the public-domain original. 5 So record your own reading from a verified public-domain text instead of copying a modern audiobook: the story is the same, the rights are not. Check the status of the specific version you plan to use; Finding out whether something is in the public domain shows how.

7. Do all Creative Commons licenses allow the same things?

No. The letters after CC are the terms:

• BY: give credit in the way the license requires. 2
• NC: noncommercial use only, meaning use not primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. 6
• ND: you may share the work, and adapt it for yourself, but you may not share the adapted version. 7
• SA: if you share an adaptation, you must license your contribution under the same license as the original. 8

A photograph under CC BY can be used commercially as long as you give credit; one under CC BY-NC-ND can only be shared unchanged, for noncommercial purposes. Calling either "a free image" hides the terms. Open the license the work actually links to and note its version: the deed is a summary, and the legal code is the license. 8 If the terms fit your use, you already have permission and do not need to ask the creator. 2 No CC license covers the publicity, privacy or trademark rights of the people and brands shown in the work. 2

8. If you change someone else's work enough, does it automatically become yours?

No. A translation, film adaptation or musical arrangement is a derivative work, and only the copyright owner can make one or authorize someone else to. 512 Your additions can be protected, but your copyright covers only what you added, never what you borrowed, and it does not reach any part of the work that uses material unlawfully. 5 An unauthorized adaptation can infringe. 5 There is no "change it by thirty percent" rule. Learning a technique or starting from a shared idea is different from copying expression: copyright never protects ideas, methods or concepts. 12 Instead of "Did I change enough?", ask three questions: What did I take? Is that part protected? What permission or exception covers this use?

9. Does asking AI to make something remove the need to think about other people's rights?

No. Whatever an AI service's terms say about who owns the output, U.S. copyright requires human authorship, and the Copyright Office has concluded that prompts alone do not give users enough control to be the authors of what the system generates. 9 Your own work that remains perceptible in an output, and your creative selection, arrangement or modification of outputs, can be protected. 9 If you register a work that contains more than a trivial amount of AI-generated material, disclose it and describe your own contribution. 9 Inputs matter too: a client's unreleased design does not become yours to upload because the next step involves AI. Before you publish, separate four things: the material you supply, your human contribution, the output you receive, and the use you plan.

10. If you have permission to use a photograph, can you use the person's face to advertise anything?

No. The photographer holds the copyright in the photograph; the person pictured has separate rights in their name and likeness. Permission from one does not settle the other: Creative Commons licenses, for example, expressly leave publicity and privacy rights unlicensed. 2 In New York, using a living person's name, portrait, picture, likeness or voice for advertising or trade without their written consent is a misdemeanor 10, and the person can sue to stop the use and for damages, including exemplary damages when the use was knowing. 13 A licensed portrait on a magazine cover and the same portrait implying that the person endorses a product are different uses. Before you put a face or voice in an ad, get the person's written consent, or a parent's or guardian's for a minor 10, and make it name the use. Synthetic faces and voices raise the same question: licensing a file does not give you a person's consent to make them appear to say yes.