Generally, a student or professor can use an image found on the internet for educational purposes under The Copyright Act if certain conditions are met. The material was legally posted by the copyright owner or with their consent; there is no clearly visible notice; on the website prohibiting users from educational use of the content and the material is not protected by a digital lock. The image still requires an attribution statement. However, using creative commons licensed or public domain images is recommended.

Giving  Attribution

When you use an image with a Creative Commons license, you have to give credit or attribute it in a particular way. Attributing just means saying what the work is, who made it, where it is from, along with what license it is used under.

The acronym TASL can help us remember what to include.

• Title of the image
• Author or creator of the image
• Source of the image. Where is it from?
• The license of the image

In some cases, such as with Creative Common Zero licenses on image collections, there may be a suggested attribution statement that you can copy. Using creative commons and public domain images and providing appropriate attributions gives us an opportunity to model ethical behaviour (not stealing images from the internet) and giving credit to others for their work (academic integrity).