Free Media Sources: Home

Copyrighted materials

Any work (photo, text, video, music, etc.) is automatically copyrighted as soon as it takes physical (or digital) form. When you use media made by others, particularly if you plan to screen your video beyond Rice or share it via a site such as YouTube, you want to respect the rights of creators. You don’t want to get sued for violating copyright. Below are some approaches you can take when using a copyrighted work. 

• Claiming fair use. Fair use enables people to use portions of copyrighted material to advance teaching, research, or commentary.  
• Using work that is under a Creative Commons (CC) license. There are six CC licenses. CC licenses are copyright licenses, and are legal tools that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights.  They allow material to be shared and reused under terms that are flexible and legally sound.  For instance, a Creative Commons Attribution license may say that you can use this work as long as you attribute it.  
• Asking permission from the copyright owner.

For a more general overview of how copyright works, refer to Fondren's Copyright and Fair Use libguide. For more information on CC, refer to Fondren's Creative Commons libguide.

Copyright free materials (i.e. materials in public domain)

Materials in public domain are not protected by copyright. You can use it without permission. For more information about materials in public domain, refer to Fondren's Finding Images and Text in the Public Domain libguide and Finding and Using Images in Publications libguide.

While the resources listed here are free to download, make sure to always check the copyright status of any works before you decide to use them in your project.