Creative Commons

Robm1955

I love messing with digital art, and creating pieces of art from photos. I'm only a beginner, and still learning, although some of the work I've done, has been appreciated by friends. Eventually, I would like to produce this art to sell. What I want to know is, can I download creative commons photos to use in my projects? They will mostly be iconic celebrities, which I change completely, but the celebrity will still be recognizable. TBH, I doubt if anyone would look at one of my pieces of work and say,'hey, that's from my photo'. It's just I need a starting point, especially for the celebrities no longer with us. I can't take my own photos.

Neil_Jones

This should be answered in the FAQs:
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#for-licensees

Robm1955

Wow! A minefield of information. Still no wiser. I need to be looking for free for commercial use, I think. This has made it clearer.


https://www.kisscc0.com/license.html

DocQuincy

What you are doing is known as derivative work and does not in any way exempt you from copyright so you are very sensible to question this. I've found most people don't and just assume that if it's on a website, you can do what you want with it.

It would likely only be an issue if you used a copyrighted image and were making a ton of money from it. Most funny Photoshop images you see that go viral use copyrighted images that aren't even under Creative Commons and you never really hear of any legal action taken against them. It's likely because the artist is difficult to find, they aren't making money, they are in a different country bound by different laws and in the US they have a more liberal application of “fair use” (situations that means you aren't liable for copyright violation).

Anyway, onto more specifics.

celebrity will still be recognizable

Legally, this is irrelevant. If you used it to create the artwork it's still a derivative work — though it may be nigh impossible to prove if you have changed it completely.

can I download creative commons photos to use in my projects

Yes you can but there are different types of CC licenses which determine what you need to do if you do use the image such as whether you attribute the author and whether you can use it commercially.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Rights

CC0 is the most liberal, effectively making it public domain so you can do whatever you like with it. Some though are much more restrictive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Adaptation for mixing different licenses.

If, like me, you don't like reading legalese, use this website, which makes it much more understandable to the layman. https://tldrlegal.com/

I do find it a bit of a minefield and prefer to buy photos from istockphoto.com for a few pounds. At least then I know I can definitely use it and I have the invoice to prove it (I use them on business websites therefore it;s commercial use).

If you're doing it for fun I would just use any old images for now and then if you get to the point where you can make it profitable start sourcing images for commercial use.

(I am not a solicitor but do work with digital imagery.)

Robm1955

Thanks for the useful information. It is just a bit of fun, at the moment, but I've seen similar things I'm wanting to achieve, for sale as prints on the likes of Ebay, and Etsy. A couple of friends have suggested I should sell them, but I've only done one good one at the moment, but it's something I would like to get into, now I am, sort of, retired. Thanks again for information, and links.

DocQuincy

To be honest, if you sell them on eBay and Etsy the chances of your being caught out is extremely low.


If you ever want to do it all above board and get stock imagery just note that the iStockPhoto standard license only allows you to reproduce them so many times. To do unlimited print runs you need the enchanced license, which is naturally more expensive. (Weirdly, a website only counts as one reproduction, no matter how many times you show it.)


I know you are likely not planning on reproducing images that many times but you never know who will stumble upon this thread in the years to come!