Copyright: Do not steal

It's super easy to steal work that does not belong to you. I think you know that you should not do that.

Photo: See number eight. ¶ 

Ask the owner for permission. If you do not know who the owner is, and there's no public license, don't use it.

A public license, such as creative commons, means you can use the work according to the license.

Those licenses are granted by the owner, not claimed (or invented) by you.

Fair Use

You can excerpt a work without permission only if you use it for original research or criticism, and if you attribute the excerpt to the author or right owner.

You can quote a passage from a book or blog post to write a review or critique, or other scholarship.

You can't just reprint the work without permission, even if you attribute it to the original source. Without permission, you can't just use the photo that someone else owns to illustrate your own work.

Honest fair use

For more on this distinction, research the legal doctrine of "fair use." Two good sources are Wikipedia and the Copyright Alliance.

It doesn't matter if you are not making money from your blog. It does not matter if you are a tax-exempt charity. It does not matter if you credit the source you are robbing. You wanting something does not put that thing in the public domain.

Don't be clever or cute about this. Don't hunt for loopholes. Don't try to twist copyright infringement into "fair use."

Do the right thing. Find something else, create your own, or do without.

Consequences

If you do steal from others, Google may remove the stolen matter, the blog post, your entire blog, or even your account (and everything in it), according to the circumstances.

And if so, you'll deserve it.

The photo of Charlton Heston as Moses, from Paramount Studios, is in the public domain. The photo of the statue of the Ten Commandments is generously licensed (CC BY-SA 4.0) by Michael Rivera. It has been cropped.