Rights and Licensing: Whose Picture Is It?

"I found it on Google" is the sentence that gets independent writers in trouble. A search engine is a finder. It does not own the pictures it shows you and it cannot give you permission to use them. Every image in those results belongs to somebody, and in most cases that somebody has not said you may use it.

This lesson is general education on U.S. copyright as it applies to images in articles. The statutes are linked so you can read the actual text.

Default setting: protected

In the United States, copyright protection begins the moment an original work is created and fixed in a tangible form. A photo is protected when the shutter clicks. The U.S. Copyright Office says registration is generally voluntary, and protection does not depend on a copyright notice. So the missing "©" on a blog photo tells you nothing. Assume every image is protected unless you have a specific reason to think otherwise.

Protection lasts a long time. For works created on or after January 1, 1978, the usual term is the author's life plus 70 years. Works made for hire and anonymous works get 95 years from publication or 120 from creation, whichever is shorter (Copyright Office Circular 15A). That covers basically every photo you will come across in a news context.

Giving credit does not change any of this. Crediting a photographer whose picture you took without permission is still using it without permission. It just makes it easier for them to find you.

Public domain

Public domain works have no copyright protection, so anyone can use them for anything. Images get there a few ways.

• Expired. In the U.S., works published before 1931 are in the public domain as of 2026. Each January 1, another year joins. That helps with historical photos, old maps and archival documents, though you still need to confirm the publication date.
• Dedicated. A creator can give up their rights. The standard tool is CC0 1.0 Universal, a public domain dedication from Creative Commons. CC0 waives copyright as far as the law allows, so you can use the work for any purpose with no attribution required (though credit is still polite and helps readers).
• Never eligible. Some works were never protected. The biggest category for civic writers is the next one.

U.S. federal government works: 17 U.S.C. 105

Section 105 of the Copyright Act says copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government. A "work of the United States Government," as section 101 of the same title defines it, means something a federal officer or employee made as part of official duties. That covers a huge pile of useful images: photos by federal agency staff photographers, maps made by federal agencies, charts in federal reports.

Know the limits, because people get these wrong all the time:

• Federal only. USA.gov notes the designation does not apply to works of state and local governments. Your state agency's photos, the county's GIS maps and the city's flyer may all be copyrighted. Some states release their works freely; many do not. Check each one.
• Not everything on a .gov site. Federal websites often carry images used with permission from outside photographers or contractors. Those keep their copyright. Look for a credit line or the agency's image use policy.
• Other rights still exist. Agency logos and seals can be restricted by other laws, and people in photos may have privacy or publicity rights under state law. Do not slap a federal seal on your graphic as if it were an endorsement.

Creative Commons licenses, by name

Creative Commons licenses let a creator grant permission in advance. The current licenses are version 4.0. Each name is built from four elements:

• BY (Attribution): you must credit the creator. All six licenses include this.
• SA (ShareAlike): if you adapt the work, you must share your adaptation under the same or a compatible license.
• NC (NonCommercial): use only for purposes not mainly aimed at commercial advantage or money.
• ND (NoDerivatives): you may share the work, but not an adapted version of it. Creative Commons says whether a change counts as an adaptation depends on copyright law, and format changes never do. A simple crop is a gray area, so on a public site treat ND images as hands off.

A position worth taking: if your site has ads, paid subscriptions or sponsorships, skip NC images. The line around "noncommercial" is fuzzy, and there are millions of CC BY and CC0 images that avoid the question.

Also check that the person posting the image actually had the right to license it. Somebody uploading a news agency's photo to a free site under CC BY does not make it CC BY.

How to credit a CC image

Creative Commons recommends the TASL pattern: Title, Author, Source, License, with the source and license linked.

"No copyright infringement intended" has no legal effect. It is a confession with good manners.

Fair use: 17 U.S.C. 107

Fair use lets you use copyrighted material without permission in some situations. Section 107 names criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research as examples of purposes that can qualify. Courts weigh four factors:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether it is commercial or for nonprofit educational purposes. Uses that add new meaning or purpose, rather than standing in for the original, weigh toward fair use.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work. Factual works get thinner protection than creative ones; published works are treated differently from unpublished ones.
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used compared to the whole work.
4. The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the work.

The Copyright Office says courts look at fair use claims case by case, and there is no formula for a safe percentage or amount. The "under 10 percent" and "under 30 seconds" rules floating around are myths.

Fair use is a defense you raise after somebody objects. Nobody grants it to you in advance. Some uses are much stronger than others. Reproducing a news photographer's image of a fire to illustrate your own story about the fire is weak: you are using it for the same purpose the photographer sells it for, which hurts their market. Reproducing that same photo in a story about whether the photo was staged, because the photo itself is the subject, is far stronger.

Screenshots

A screenshot is a copy. Screenshotting a copyrighted image does not clean it.

But screenshots are a normal and often strong part of civic reporting when the thing on screen is the news. An official's public social media post. A government web page that was changed. A campaign ad. In those cases you are showing the item to report on it and comment on it, which lines up with the purposes named in section 107. Some practical habits:

• Crop to what you are discussing. Use only as much as the reader needs to see.
• Keep the date, time and URL visible when they matter, or note them in the caption.
• Save the original page with an archive service as well, in case it vanishes.
• Do not screenshot a photo inside a post just to get the photo. That is the same as downloading it.
• Black out phone numbers and personal details of private people who appear in the screenshot.