Images – including photographs, diagrams and other illustrations – available in print or from electronic sources are subject to copyright. It is essential to provide complete acknowledgements or attributions to the source.
For teaching purposes, using them under the criticism or review or the illustration for instruction exceptions may be permissible. Still, they must be given full acknowledgement or attribution, and care must be taken to ensure they are not further distributed.
Many sources of free images available on the Internet provide them with permission for use in certain circumstances, including teaching and private study, e.g., Creative Commons licensed images. You should always check the terms and conditions to ensure your use is legal and fully acknowledge your source.
Images freely available on the internet may still be protected by copyright, and you need permission from the rights-holder before copying them. Not all material marked as free to use on the Internet is meant to be distributed freely: material might be incorrectly annotated like, for example, some posted on Flickr and Wikimedia (for more details, see the related post following the link) – the latter complies with US law and marks some content as Public domain, but it is not considered to be so in our jurisdiction.
Images in sources covered by the CLA Licence may be scanned and distributed to students. They may also be included in presentations. Report any teaching material that includes scanned images to the digitisation service through the Subject Librarian.
The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.