Free-to-use media

There are many sources of free-to-use content available online. This page provides suggestions on where to look for such content.

Copyright

Remember, if material has been licenced for reuse, make sure you check the terms of use for any material you find, as these will vary. Some material may be in the Public Domain, where copyright has expired or been waived by the creator. As a general rule you should always acknowledge/attribute the creator of any material you reuse as best academic practice.

Indicators of free-use

Public Domain - Works in the public domain are those whose intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are otherwise inapplicable. Public domain marked materials can be used free of any copyright restrictions or attribution. We would still recommend either attributing the work or keeping a record of its title, source, and copyright status in order to enable ease of re-use for future works and projects.

CC0 - Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use. Creative Commons have created the CC0 licence to enable owners of copyright content, to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law. CC0 marked materials can be used free of any copyright restrictions or attribution requirements. We would still recommend either attributing the work or keeping a record of its title, source, and copyright status in order to enable ease of re-use for future works and projects.

Credit

Icons used on this demonstration site are by Adrian Coquet, Evon, Ezgi Nazlı, Andrejs Kirma fron The Noun Project.

Finding Public Domain and Openly Licensed Resources

  • Images.is.ed.ac.uk – This is the University of Edinburgh Library collection of digitised images from our library, archives, and museums. A number of images within the collection have been openly licensed.
  • Flickr - Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license; you can browse or search through content under each type of license. Our Centre for Research Collections (CRC) has a Flickr channel highlighting some of the excellent openly licensed content in our collections. Visit the CRC Flickr channel
  • Wellcome Collection – Thousands of Creative Commons licensed images from historical library materials and museum objects to contemporary digital photographs.
  • Wikimedia Commons – Wikimedia operates on a copyleft principle so the majority of media, images, video, sound files are in the Public Domain, CC0, or CC BY-SA licensed.
  • Europeana – A collection of digitised Museum, Gallery, Library, and Archival media from all across Europe. To search for licensed content, use the filter ‘Can I use it?’. Europeana also offers the ability to filter by institution, so you can search for University of Edinburgh content that has been openly licensed here too.
  • Public Domain Review – Aims to shine a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives, highlighting content that has now fallen into the public domain and is no longer protected by copyright.
  • Search Creative Commons - The Creative Commons website has a facility to search across multiple sources for material labelled for re-use under a CC licence.
  • CC Beta Search – The new release of the CC Beta Search tool aggregates results from across the multiple public repositories into a single catalogue, and also facilitates the use and re-use through tools like curated lists, saved searches, one- or no-click attribution, and provenance.
  • FreeFoto.com - FreeFoto.com claims to be the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet. All images are free to use with attribution for non-commercial purposes.
  • Pixabay – A large percentage of Pixabay images are openly licensed.
  • Noun Project - Over a million curated icons, created by a global community

  • Media Hopper  is the University’s Media Asset platform. It provides all staff and students with a space that they can use to upload media and then publish to various places, including VLEs, Websites and social media channels.
  • YouTube is the world’s largest online video sharing platform. YouTube offers two types of licences for videos uploaded to the platform, including the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
  • Vimeo was the first video sharing site to support high-definition video. Videos can also be re-shared and embedded within other websites by using the Vimeo platform. However, Vimeo also offers the full suite of Creative Commons and Public Domain licensing options. And users can also choose to allow others to download their content for re-use outside of Vimeo. For this reason, the platform is often preferred by artists and film creators.
  • Soundcloud is used by a broad range of amateur and professional artists, societies, and broadcasters. Just like YouTube and Vimeo, SoundCloud tracks can also be shared and embedded within other webpages and platforms such as Twitter. It also offers the full suite of Creative Commons and Public Domain licensing options.
  • Public Domain Review – Aims to shine a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives, highlighting content that has now fallen into the public domain and is no longer protected by copyright.
  • Wikimedia Commons – Wikimedia operates on a copyleft principle, meaning that the work continues to be open and available for re-use, so the majority of media, images, video, sound files are in the Public Domain, CC0, or CC BY-SA licensed.
  • Europeana – A collection of digitised Museum, Gallery, Library, and Archival media from all across Europe. To search for licensed content, use the filter ‘Can I use it?’. Europeana also offers the ability to filter by institution, so you can search for University of Edinburgh content that has been openly licensed here too.
  • Search Creative Commons - The Creative Commons website has a facility to search across multiple sources for material labelled for re-use under a CC licence.
  • CC Beta Search – The new release of the CC Beta Search tool aggregates results from across the multiple public repositories into a single catalogue, and also facilitates the use and re-use through tools like curated lists, saved searches, one- or no-click attribution, and provenance.

Read more about free-to-use media

This article was published on