InfoGuides: Images: Understand Copyright & Fair Use

Copyright Overview

Copyright laws can be intimidating, but it's important to understand your rights as both users of materials and as creators of new artistic or scholarly works.

These resources can help you to understand the basics of copyright, and find units on campus to help support your copyright questions:

Copyright Basics (U.S. Copyright Office)
The basics of copyright -- what's covered by copyright, what isn't, and how long copyright endures
Copyright Resources from Mason Publishing
Copyright basics and support for authors and creators at Mason
George Mason University Copyright Policy
Mason's official copyright policy
Copyright Terms and the Public Domain
Trying to decide if your source is under copyright or in the public domain? Cornell University provides a useful explanation and chart of the terms of copyright law, including years.

Fair Use for Artists and Scholars

As artists, scholars, and non-profit managers, one of your most useful tools is the doctrine of Fair Use. Fair use is built into U.S. copyright law and identifies certain conditions where copyrighted materials may be used, even without permission or payment to a copyright holder.

These resources can help you to understand fair use conditions for a number of situations, including teaching, scholarly/museum publishing, and making new creative works.

U.S. Copyright Office: Fair Use
Includes an of the "four factors" of fair use, and links to recent fair use/copyright cases from U.S. courts
Fair Use for the Visual Arts (College Art Association)
CAA's Code of Best Practices provides useful guidelines for artists, designers, and art historians working with copyrighted materials, and describes how these materials can be used in scholarship, teaching, museums, and the creation of art.
Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
Best practices for using copyrighted material in documentary film projects
Center for Media and Social Impact: Fair Use, Free Speech, and Intellectual Property
The Center for Media and Social Impact (American University) supports and develops tools to help artists, students, researchers, and scholars understand how to employ fair use.
Artists Rights Society: Request Rights
Exhausted your Fair Use options? Want to use an image but need the rights from the owner? The ARS works as a clearinghouse for various artists' estates and can help you to secure image rights for various uses.

Fair Use for Images in Museums

Guidelines on Fair Use of Thumbnail Digital Images (AAMD)
Working on a museum website? Want to know if you can use thumbnails of artworks in your public collections catalog? This white paper covers some guidelines from the Association of Art Museum Directors.