Collecting and downloading stock images and videos have become a routine for online marketers, however, it is very important to understand a few terms regarding Intellectual Property like copyright, royalty, licensing etc before downloading and posting the digital assets to your social media otherwise you might be involved in a lawsuit and still not knowing what had happened.
You might be thinking how easy the owner knows if you “steal” his copyright. Well, the one that caught you is not a person but a robot, what we call AI (Artificial Intelligence). Have you ever tried using a popular music as your background music and when trying to post to facebook, in few seconds, you got a message the audio is muted due to copyright issue? The AI is super efficient, isn’t it?
You might have experienced the above and thinking, well, next time just looking for copyright-free or royalty-free stock assets then you will be safe. The question is: Is copyright-free really free? The short answer is of course NO.
When you download the copyright right or royalty free stock assets from a website you must read the terms very carefully, below are the basic things you need to know.
The Scope of Free
Even though it is mentioned copyright free in the website, it could mean only allow for certain usage or channel, for example when you download music from YouTube audio library, it does mention you can only it for youtube video and not others (see picture below). Besides, some website will mention their assets are only free for personal use but not commercial use, meaning you can’t monetize (making money) the digital assets.
Is Attribution Required?
One of the common rules in most of the website for their copyright free picture is you must mention the source of the stock assets (either the owner’s name or the URL of the website). Without mentioning the source you are violating the rules.
How About Royalty-Free?
Royalty is the fee you pay to the owner over a period of time or based on the number of copies you use, even though you might not need to pay for a long term fee if you download a royalty free assets but typically you might still need to pay a one time fee to acquire the license for the usage.
A More Safer One..
If you really want to make sure you are in a safe place, look for those published as public domain or creative common. This means the digital assets are not protected by IP laws and are free to use. For example, when you search images in google, click on the Tool-Usage Rights, you will notice one of them is Creative Common, this means you can use the image with worries free.
Where to Get Copyright-free Stock Assets?
There are tons of copyright free stock assets out there, you can get them by just google search with keyword copyright free images/audio/video. My favourite one among the many is Pixabay. Most of the stock assets are attribution free and allowed for commercial use, what they ask is donation. You can get tons of images and videos from Pixabay. There are other websites like Pixabay for example like Unsplash, Pexels, Freepik, Gettyimages, however most of them need attribution which I don’t quite like it.
More on Free Stock..
For free background music which is really free, there are some you can find them in youtube, but you have to download them in mp3 format, one of the channel I use is Alec Koff – Background Music. Another asset type that I used to use is the icon picture, and my top choice is iconfont, however, you need to have a weibo account to download the icon as iconfont is owned by Alibaba, is a Chinese company.
What is your favourite website that you download copyright free stock assets? Did you check the terms before downloading? Share your thought with us!
Video is an effective form of communication that needs to be integrated into each and every aspect of your existing marketing efforts.
James Wedmore
Cheers!
