Visual Literacy Research Guide

Determining what is or isn't in the public domain can be a complicated and lengthy process. However, the chart within provides help to guide you through some of the labyrinthine rules of US copyright.

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work?

Stock photos play a crucial role in content creation, marketing, and branding. Whether you’re a business owner, blogger, designer, or social media manager, using high-quality visuals can elevate your content and engage your audience. However, before incorporating stock images into your work, it’s essential to understand the differences between royalty-free and licensed stock photos to ensure you’re complying with copyright laws and avoiding potential legal complications.

Remix involves changing, blending, adding to, or taking away from existing media to create something new. Often remix is associated with music, as in the process of taking a radio song and remixing it for a nightclub or remixing a country song for a pop music radio station. But any media can be remixed, from photography to text to film. With writing, one notable example of remix is the cut-up technique, which involves actually cutting up a text and rearranging the cut pieces to form a new text.

*Note that there are 2 sections in this Copyright Office publication – one for Digital Replicas (which includes Deep Fakes) and one is for Copyrightability (which includes images/videos humans prompt AI to generate). When it comes to feeding a photo or video you found from another source into an AI generator, first look to see if there is specific info provided about that in the visual media license or AI generator terms and conditions. If there isn’t specific guidance, it would be safest not to do it since the federal courts are just starting to set precedents. Though it may seem reasonable to apply Remix guidelines to open-source images and the transformative/derivative work guidelines to fair use exceptions, there is no clarity on the matter at this time. This site has the most detailed and up to date information on this topic. Use what is most currently detailed on this page at your publication date.

Attribution is comparable to in-text citation, but it is placed under the visual media as the source credit. Even if an image was created by you, is in the public domain, is from a stock library, or has an open license, it should be attributed in academic work. For attribution, remember TASL – title, author, source, and license.

Citation is required for all copyrighted works and recommended for works in the public domain. Copyrighted work can be used in limited ways for academic purposes, but you must follow “fair use” guidelines (e.g., it is closely related to the curriculum and project purpose, a very small sample of the work is included, you only share it with your instructor or with registered students in a live, unrecorded presentation.) For citation, remember to include visual media in your References list using the appropriate style guidelines required by your instructor.