copywronged
Copywronged
Only one thing is
impossible for God:
to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
― Mark Twain
Do not use copyrighted content without permission.
Don’t use copyrighted materials in your work unless you (1) own the copyright, (2) the material is in the public domain, or (3) you have explicit permission or a license from the copyright holder. In the eyes of the laws of many countries, any creative work is copyrighted by the creator at the moment of conception. In other words, the creative work does not have to be formally registered with the government or adorned with the © symbol to make it official. The act of creation is also the act of creating a copyright.
If you took a photograph or made a graph, then you own the copyright. If you asked your friend to use your camera (or, more likely these days, your phone) to take a photo of you next to a geologic formation or large concrete pecan, your friend owns the copyright to that photo, and you technically need permission to use it in presentations, reports, and papers. If that seems strange, consider the story of David Slater and the crested macaque that picked up his camera, smiled, and took a selfie.
Slater traveled to Indonesia in 2011 and set up his photography equipment in such a way that the macaques could take selfies. And selfie they did. One macaque, later named Naruto, took an amazingly good and memorable selfie (Figure 1). The photograph went viral online and in the press. Wikimedia Commons posted the photo on their web site under the premise that, because a macaque took the photo and animals can’t hold a copyright, the photo was in the public domain. Slater felt that he owned the copyright and challenged Wikimedia’s interpretation with the United States Copyright Office in 2014. The Copyright Office ruled that, indeed, photos taken by animals could not be copyrighted. Copyright experts agreed with the administrative ruling with the caveat that the issue wouldn’t really be settled until there was a court case.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals helpfully provided this opportunity when they sued Slater and his publisher in 2015 after Slater published a book with the selfie in it. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals argued that the macaque, who they named Naruto, owned the copyright to the photo and sued on her behalf (Naruto v. David Slater et al.)[1]. The district court ruled that animals cannot hold copyrights, upon which People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Court agreed with the lower court’s ruling.
The lessons here are that (1) you should take your own photos, (2) things can get real ugly if you use someone’s content without permission, and (3) you shouldn’t hire macaques to photograph your wedding. If you use a friend’s photo, you will need to get written permission to use their photo for your specific purpose. Simply crediting someone who took the photo is not enough—you have to have permission.
These same lessons apply to graphics. While I hope you don’t plan on using macaques to make box and whisker plots of your data, the person or entity who makes and publishes the plots (or develops the final plots) technically owns the copyright to that figure. And if you do use macaques for graphing, know that you are OK since their work is in the public domain.
public domain
After a certain amount of time, photographs and graphics enter the public domain. When something enters the public domain depends on several factors which can vary from country to country. In the United States, entering the public domain depends on if the work was published/registered or not, when the creator died, and if the work was published abroad and in which country (Cornell 2022). For example, in the United States, unpublished and unregistered works are protected for the life of the creator plus 70 years. If the work was registered or first published in the United States, then the work is protected for 95 years after that date.
There is no international copyright law, so if you want to use work created by someone outside your country, you will have to check their country’s laws to determine if their work is in the public domain. While there is no international copyright law, around 180 countries have ratified the Berne Convention to establish minimum copyright standards. These minimum standards are maintained by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
government documents and the public domain
Photographs and graphics generated by governmental bodies are generally considered to be in the public domain[2]; however, you should be careful: everything in a government report may not be in the public domain or the graphic may include protected content. For example, the simple act of the government reproducing copyrighted material in a report does not, by default, place that material in the public domain. Oftentimes, you will see the words “reproduced by permission from [blahblahblah]” where blahblahblah may be the person who made the graphic and/or the publisher. This means that the government received permission to reproduce that content for that report or purpose. It does not mean that the content is now in the public domain.
fair use
You might argue that you can use a graphic protected by copyright under the Fair Use Doctrine. Legally speaking, the fair use of an item is decided on a case-by-case basis, and by case-by-case, I mean legal case-by-legal case. In other words, you don’t know if you can use something under the Fair Use Doctrine until your use is challenged in court. Your argument for fair use is shaky if (1) you or your publisher are using the graphic to make a profit, (2) the work is unpublished, (3) the work is used in consumable works (such as worksheets and exams), (4) you use all of the work, (5) you can license it but didn’t, (6) you broadly disseminate it, or (7) you use it repeatedly or over the long term, among other factors (Cornell 2022). In short, by my interpretation (note that I’m a scientist, not a lawyer), you shouldn’t use Fair Use as an excuse for using copyrighted materials in your work. Most universities and publishers require that you don’t use any materials that are copyrighted unless you have permission.
open-source sources
There are sources for open-source content with Wikimedia Commons probably being the most familiar (that’s where I got that macaque photo from!). To use something from Wikimedia, you need to check the requirements the copyright holder placed on the photo or graphic.
For example, let’s say we are interested in using a map of tornadoes from Wikimedia Commons (Figure 2). Under the web page for the file, there is a licensing section that states:
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You are free:
· to share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work
· to remix—to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
· attribution—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.
· share alike—If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
There are several things to watch out for in this case:
(1) Is this really the represented author’s work, or did they simply steal someone else’s work and post it as their own? Given that this poster is named “Master of Time” (suggesting that, perhaps, the poster is Albert Einstein), it’s somewhat suspicious (sorry Mr. [or Ms] Time: nothing personal). If there’s a real name there, you can look them up to see if they’re legit. You can also download a photo or graphic and then do a reverse image search to see if it’s from somewhere else and is copyrighted. By clicking on the name at Wikimedia Commons, I can see that the author’s name is Dustin, but there is no surname.
(2) Do you know and trust where the data is from? In this case, Master of Time specifies in the metadata that “Map of tornadoes in the May 21–26, 2011 tornado outbreak sequence created using QGIS with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” One worrying thing, if we want to use this graphic in our report, is that the background map could be protected under a copyright. However, Master of Time wisely used QGIS, an open-source geographic information system, to make the map. It’s unfortunate that he does not provide a link to the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration nor specify when he accessed it, something expected of academic-level research.
(3) Do you really want to use Wiki-whatever in your work? I was once on a call with a co-worker while she was driving with her kids (she was hands off) when I mentioned Wikipedia. That sparked her eight-year-old daughter, Kara, to give me a finger-wagging lecture on why I shouldn’t be using Wikipedia for research. She was right, of course (and still is). I have, however, used verified photographs from Wikimedia in published documents.
(4) Do you really want to credit someone named Master of Time in your report, thesis, dissertation, or submitted journal article?
You also need to be concerned with the accuracy of the information presented. I was once in a Zoom meeting when a professor hired as a consultant included a graph in his presentation. I found it interesting and started to ask questions to better understand it. When the professor struggled to answer, a different professor asked where he got the graph from. “Wikipedia,” he replied, “but it references a paper by so-and-so.” Over the next few minutes, the other professor determined that the figure had been modified (with no indication that it had been modified) with information that had been misinterpreted. Surfer beware.
There are also places to access license-free or royalty-free photographs. Pixabay and pexels are personal favorites, especially for presentations. Picryl is another source. My workplace likes to use flickr as a source of open-licensed photographs depending on the preferences of the photographer. Similar to the example above, you need to verify that the photographer and photo is legitimately legit. And for any photograph you use, document the license as it existed at that time you used it (such as through a screen capture).
In summary, be careful about using open or royalty-free photographs or graphics. It good to perform due diligence before using such items.
giving credit where credit is due
When you use someone else’s figures or photos in your work, you need to provide credit, whether the item is in the public domain or not (Figure 1). This is a moral right of the creator. If you use a graphic in the public domain, you should include, “from [creator].” If you use an item with a copyright, you should (1) get permission to reproduce it and (2) acknowledge it with, “used with permission from [creator].” If you licensed an item, then you should note that licensing with, “licensed from [creator].”
If you modify a graphic, you should then include, “modified from [creator]” or “modified and used with permission from [creator].” By modify, I mean added (or perhaps subtracted) content from the original. Technically, if you made any change to someone’s work, you need to note that you modified it. Some might suggest that the act of modifying someone else’s work makes it your own, but that’s not accurate, at least in our line of business.
I’ll be honest: getting permission for photographs and graphics can be a long and difficult process. The photography industry is geared well for licensing photographs; however, graphics are a different deal, and it can take months (and months [and months]) to get permission. One way to get around this is to rework the graphic yourself.
A copyright applies to the graphic but not to the underlying information, data, or facts. Given that fact, you can redo a plot or map and publish it under your own copyright. Because (1) I am a graphics snob, (2) I have enough of an ego to believe I can make graphics better than you, and (3) I know how to (vaguely) use Adobe Illustrator (and enjoy it), I tend to follow this path. In this case, you are morally obligated to write, “after [creator]” since your re-engineered graphic was based on someone’s else’s work.
open-source journals
In traditional academic publishing, the publisher owns the copyright to the work. You, the author, signs over your copyrights to the publisher. In many open-source journals, the copyright remains with the authors. In other words, don’t assume that just because a paper was published in an open-source journal you can copy content without permission.
Figure 1: Naruto, the macaque that used David Slater’s camera to take a selfie (photo by Naruto [but legally in the public domain]).
Figure 2: Map of tornadoes in the May 21 through 26, 2011, outbreak (by Master of Time from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License (Master of Time 2022).
copyright Robert E. Mace 2025
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