Section 2: Copyright and Licences

Did you know that anything you create—whether it be a blog, a song, a painting, or a photograph—is automatically protected by Canadian copyright law? This means that no one can can use it without your permission. It also means that you cannot use someone else’s creation without their permission. There are some exceptions to this, which we will discuss below.

To better understand how copyright works in Canada, have a look at this short three-minute video:

Sometimes a creator will make their work available to others using a Creative Commons License. The creator can choose the level of licence they wish to use, then apply the appropriate logo to their work to indicate how others are permitted to use it. The infographic below shows the various levels of Creative Commons licences. Note also that the infographic is credited using an appropriate attribution style underneath the image.

If you want to find images that are licensed for use under Creative Commons, there are a couple of ways to do so. One is to do a Google Image search, then filter the search to only show images that have Creative Commons licences. Click on “Tools,” then “Usage Rights” as indicated in the image below.

Flickr also has an option to select images based on their Creative Commons license, and Wikimedia Commons has thousands of media files available for public use. These photos need to be properly attributed to the creator.

Finally, there are sites such as Pixabay and Unsplash that offer free photos that can be used without any permission or attribution. If you still don’t find what you need, try a paid site, such as Shutterstock, that offers a wide range of images and videos that can be downloaded for a fee.

References & Resources

Creative Commons. (n.d.). About the licenses. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ licensed under CC BY 4.0

Flickr. (n.d.). Explore / Creative Commons. https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Government of Canada. (2019). A guide to copyright. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-intellectual-property-office/en/copyright/guide/guide-copyright

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. (2016, September 7). What is a copyright? (Canada) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljNS5p3cqls&ab_channel=Innovation%2CScienceandEconomicDevelopmentCanada

Pixabay. (n.d.). Home page. https://pixabay.com/

Shutterstock. (2022). Home page. https://www.shutterstock.com/

Unsplash. (n.d.). Home page. https://unsplash.com/

Wikimedia Commons. (2022). Home page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page