Giving credit where credit is due is always the respectful way to say thanks, and is sometimes a requirement to use an image. Depending on the license terms set by the creator, they may give you special permission to use their image as long as you follow the terms. This is most common in a Creative Commons (CC) type license, where the creator grants permission at no cost, but requires something in return, e.g., attribution, no modifications, or non-commercial use.If you wish to give credit, or comply with a CC license, this guide will cover everything you need to know about image credit and give you practical tips and actual examples.
It’s important to know that giving credit on its own does not entitle you to use an image. For instance, an image published under an “All Rights Reserved” license (the default copyright grant, unless stated otherwise), means no rights are granted for any use. You must get explicit permission from the rights-holder, and/or secure a license before you use the image. In the event therefore that you properly credited a work but never received permission from the image owner, you can find yourself in legal trouble. As there are some misconceptions in this topic, it’s important to clarify the ins and outs of image crediting.
Image credit is where the image user gives attribution to the image owner. It serves two main purposes:
More often than not, the presented information will only be the image owner’s name and a copyright notice. That on its own should signal who to contact in the event of re-use.Since 1989, it’s not required to attach a copyright notice to images in the USA, therefore you might find one without any information regarding attribution — although, photographers and all image owners are more than likely to still share that so they can protect their images online.
With that said, if you encounter an image without credit or contact information for the image owner, always remember that someone is likely the copyright holder and it cannot be used without permission or a license. If you cannot find the owner, you must consider not using that image and look for another one that you can clearly license from the image owner.
Giving credit where credit is due could be the simple answer to why giving credit is important. For a more detailed explanation, let’s look at the perspective of both the image owner and the image user. From the perspective of the image owner:
From the perspective of the image user:It’s the law-abiding behavior (in some countries image owners have the legal right to be attributed to their work)
To understand how to give credit and the terms and conditions set for a given image here are some commonly used terms:
These are some of the common terms that will navigate you in the direction of image credits related to the given visual work online. However, as mentioned above, be prudent and do everything in your power to be law-abiding by asking for permission and then following the rules for use set by the image owner. If you cannot find them or you’re not sure about the terms and conditions set, ask the image owner. If you cannot contact them for any reason, move on and find an image that you can credit with confidence.
[Image owner’s name]
[Date of creation]
[Link to the image owner/ source]
Photographer Penny, “Rockefeller Center”, 2021, via www.pennyphotos.co.uk
Once again, whatever site policies and image crediting recommendations you may run into online, it’s advised to always contact the image owner and ask for their permission to use the image (unless you share something you created). Naturally, on some platforms, i.e., social media sites, where millions of pictures are in circulation without image credits, this can be extremely difficult — but that only raises the importance of the matter.
Facebook and Instagram have the exact same copyright policy due to the fact that both are owned by Facebook. While stock sites, for example, as a collection of images have the intent to either only showcase images or help them get sold, Facebook and Instagram focus on (social) sharing which brings its own challenges when it comes to the practice of image crediting.
The basic rules of Facebook and Instagram to avoid image crediting issues:
Common image crediting misbeliefs in social media:
A recent court case found that the website is still liable for copyright infringement when embedding without the creator’s permission. Instagram also updated their Terms and Conditions to require the embedder to have the creator's permission and/or a license before embedding a post.
Due to the nature of social media sites, it’s advised to give image credit to image owners the same way you would do it anywhere else which is following what they asked for on their platforms. In addition, you can use the extra functions provided by these platforms, tagging the image owner with the @ symbol if they are present there but that should be a plus. On the other hand, if the image was originally posted on the artist’s Facebook profile or Instagram account, a tagging may be all you need — after asking for permission and discussing the image owner’s wishes before posting.
GIFs, as part of today’s meme culture, have the potential to go viral and with that, lose image credits along the way (if they had any to begin with). However, let’s state it first and foremost: yes, GIFs are subject to copyright as well. On the other hand, as Lexology points out, they are actually not always 100% original work but contain “snippets of existing copyright material (e.g., a short sequence from a film or similar motion video)” — in fact, the most popular GIFs do.
Therefore, GIFs certainly present a unique problem regarding their creator who works with unlicensed material and the person who shares the GIF, not being authorized to do so. This means that currently, the legality of using GIFs is still not a clear issue.
GIPHY, as the world’s first and largest GIF search engine, home to more than 10 million GIFs, stickers and animated content, acknowledges this the following way in their community guidelines:
Photo by Nathan Lemon" />
Flickr supports a total of 11 image license types from “All Rights Reserved” to “No known copyright restrictions”.
Photographers usually praise Flickr as its default license setting of uploaded images is “All Rights Reserved”. This means, even if the creator forgets about this option when sharing their picture on the platform, they will be able to easily defend their work if any legal problems would occur later as they never gave permission for use in the first place (“just” by sharing it).
As an image user, make sure to check what license to follow for the Flickr image you would like to use and make sure to give credits accordingly. Besides “All Rights Reserved” (where you cannot use the creator’s image without their explicit permission), you’ll see that Flickr’s system relies on the CC licenses, e.g., the “Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)” which says:
“You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.”
Appropriate Flickr image crediting, in this case, means providing:
To look at a different example or the other end of the spectrum, there’s Unsplash, “the internet’s source of freely-usable images”, where you can download and use all photos for free, even for commercial and non-commercial purposes and without any permission needed.With that said, there are permitted actions for photos found on Unsplash as well:
Furthermore, although attribution is not required, as discussed, it’s always nice to give credit to the photographer and Unsplash provides a concrete example as well: “Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash”.
When a user clicks on the “Download free” button next to a photograph, they’re even prompted to give a shout-out to the creator or copy the image credit text already written for them which they can paste to the platform where they will use the picture.
If you want to use an image you found on Google or Pinterest, it’s important to know that simply referring to Google or Pinterest as the source, will not be satisfactory. Google is a search engine and although Pinterest is mostly perceived as a social platform, it also shares a similar functionality. Therefore, none of these can be accepted and signalled as the original source of an image and you must track the actual creator and/or owner to get their permission. As with other platforms, if you cannot find the person, don’t gamble: find another image that you can properly credit.
The easiest way to give image credit would be if it wasn’t needed at all because you purchased the work of the image owner and are free to use it. However, even in some of those cases, the scope of use could be limited, depending on the arrangement.
All in all, giving image credit as an image user must always start with asking for the owner’s permission and following the image crediting rules they set for the given work.
For more practical tips and advice around copyright, visit the Pixsy Academy and learn about your rights as a visual property user.
