To avoid copyright infringement, use material you created yourself, material that sits in the public domain, or material you have written permission to use — and lean on fair use only when your specific use genuinely fits its four factors. Copyright attaches automatically the moment someone fixes an original creative work in a tangible form, so nearly every photo, article, song, and video you encounter online is protected whether or not it carries a copyright notice. Statutory damages run from $750 to $150,000 per work infringed, which is reason enough to take the steps below seriously.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
Use Your Own Original Work
The cleanest path is to make the material yourself. When you write an article, take a photograph, or compose a piece of music, you own the copyright the instant the work is fixed in a tangible medium. No registration, no copyright symbol, no formality required.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General
The bar for “original” is lower than most people assume. The work doesn’t have to be brilliant or novel. It needs to originate with you and show at least a spark of creativity. A phone snapshot of your lunch qualifies. A blog post in your own words qualifies. A direct copy of someone else’s work does not.
The Work-for-Hire Trap
The person who physically creates a work doesn’t always own it. If an employee produces something within the scope of their job, the employer holds the copyright automatically.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 101 – Definitions
For independent contractors, the rules are different and much stricter. A commissioned work only qualifies as work-for-hire if it falls into one of nine specific categories (such as contributions to a collective work, translations, or parts of a movie) and both parties sign a written agreement stating the work is made for hire.4U.S. Copyright Office. Works Made for Hire If those conditions aren’t met, the contractor keeps the copyright even if you paid for the work. If you hire someone to produce content for your business, get the agreement in writing before work begins, and make sure the contract either establishes work-for-hire or assigns the copyright to you. Otherwise, using the finished material later could put you in the position of infringing something you paid for.
Use Public Domain Material
Public domain material is free for anyone to use, adapt, and build on for any purpose, personal or commercial, without permission. A work enters the public domain when its copyright term expires. As of January 1, 2026, all works published in the United States through 1930 are available. That includes Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the first Nancy Drew novels, and songs like “I Got Rhythm” and “Georgia on My Mind.”5Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Public Domain Day 2026
For works created on or after January 1, 1978, copyright lasts for the author’s life plus 70 years. Anonymous works, works published under a pseudonym, and works made for hire are protected for 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 302 – Duration of Copyright: Works Created on or After January 1, 1978 Every January 1, another batch of works crosses into the public domain as those terms expire.
Federal Government Works
Works produced by U.S. federal government employees as part of their official duties are not eligible for copyright protection at all.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 105 – Subject Matter of Copyright: United States Government Works Federal reports, NASA photographs, Census Bureau data, and similar materials are free to use. Be careful with the edges of this rule. It applies only to works produced by federal employees. Content from state and local governments, federal contractors, and grantees may still be copyrighted, and the federal government can hold copyrights that have been transferred to it.
Remember That Ideas and Facts Are Not Protected
Copyright covers the specific way someone expresses an idea, not the idea itself. You can write your own detective novel set in 1930s San Francisco without infringing The Maltese Falcon, but you can’t copy Hammett’s prose to do it. Facts, concepts, systems, and methods of operation all sit outside copyright’s reach.
You are free to use the same underlying idea, data set, or historical fact that appears in someone else’s work, as long as you express it in your own way. A recipe’s ingredient list, for example, is generally not copyrightable, though the personal narrative wrapped around it might be.
Rely on Fair Use Carefully
Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission, and it is the exception people most often lean on and most often misjudge. It is not a blanket right to use small amounts of anything. Courts weigh four factors together, and no single factor decides the case.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 107 – Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use
- Purpose and character of the use. A use is more likely to qualify if it’s transformative, adding new meaning, commentary, or criticism rather than repackaging the original. A film clip in a critical video essay sits on stronger ground than the same clip dropped into an ad. Non-commercial and educational uses also weigh in your favor, though they don’t guarantee protection.
- Nature of the copyrighted work. Borrowing from a factual work like a news article gets more leeway than borrowing from a highly creative work like a novel or a feature film.
- Amount used. Quoting a single line from a book in a review is very different from reprinting an entire chapter. But even a small portion can weigh against you if it captures the “heart” of the work.
- Market effect. If your use substitutes for the original and costs the creator sales, that cuts heavily against fair use. A parody that doesn’t replace the original in the marketplace has a much stronger case than a full upload that competes with it directly.
The line between parody and satire matters more than most people realize. A parody targets the original work itself, mocking or commenting on it, and generally needs to borrow recognizable elements to make its point. That borrowing often qualifies as fair use. Satire uses someone’s work to criticize something else entirely, like a social trend. Because satire could make its point without using the copyrighted material, courts give it less protection. If your project pokes fun at the work you’re borrowing from, you’re on firmer ground than if you’re using someone else’s work as a vehicle for unrelated commentary.
Get a License or Written Permission
When fair use doesn’t apply and the work isn’t in the public domain, the safe path is explicit permission. A license is a written agreement spelling out how you can use the work, for how long, in what territory, and on what platforms. It removes the guesswork that comes with relying on exceptions.
Start by identifying who actually holds the copyright. That might be the original creator, a publisher, a production company, or a rights management organization. For music, performing rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI maintain searchable databases of songwriters and publishers. For written works, check the copyright notice on the work itself or contact the publisher directly.
Some licenses are free, especially for non-commercial uses. Others involve a one-time fee or ongoing royalties. Get the final terms in writing before you use the material. A verbal “sure, go ahead” can evaporate the moment there’s money involved. A signed license is your proof.
When You Can’t Find the Copyright Holder
Sometimes you hit a dead end. The creator is unknown, deceased with no identifiable heirs, or simply unreachable. These are called orphan works. The work is still copyrighted, but there is nobody to ask. The U.S. currently has no formal orphan works licensing system, so using one always carries some legal risk. Your best protection is documenting every step you took to find the rights holder: databases searched, organizations contacted, dates, and results. If an owner surfaces later, that documented search can help show your use was in good faith.
Use Creative Commons and Stock Content Correctly
Creative Commons licenses let creators tell the world in advance how their work can be used. Instead of tracking down a rights holder and negotiating terms, you check the license attached to the work and follow its conditions. The system is standardized and widely used across photography, educational resources, music, and open-source projects.
The most permissive option, Attribution (CC BY), lets you use the work for any purpose, including commercial, as long as you credit the creator.9Creative Commons. Attribution 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) allows use only for non-commercial purposes.10Creative Commons. About CC Licenses Other variants add restrictions like ShareAlike (you must license your derivative work under the same terms) and NoDerivatives (you can share but not modify). Read the specific license. The differences between them are the whole point.
When you attribute CC-licensed material, include four things: the title of the work, the author’s name, a link to the source, and a link to the license. If any of that information isn’t available, include as much as you can. Getting attribution wrong is one of the most common ways people accidentally violate a Creative Commons license, and it’s the easiest to get right.
Stock content libraries offer another route. Sites that sell stock photos, videos, and music grant you a license on purchase. These licenses vary. Some allow unlimited commercial use, others restrict editing or the number of copies. Read the terms before you buy. “Purchased” does not mean “own the copyright.” It means you have a license with boundaries.
Be Careful With AI-Generated Content
If you use AI tools to generate text, images, or music, one rule is settled: purely AI-generated material is not eligible for copyright registration. The U.S. Copyright Office requires human authorship and will refuse to register a work it determines was created by a machine without meaningful human creative input.11Federal Register. Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence In March 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to this rule, leaving it in place.
You can still use AI in your creative process. The Copyright Office has registered hundreds of works that combine AI-generated elements with substantial human authorship. The key is that a human must exercise creative control over the final product, selecting, arranging, or significantly modifying the AI output. When you register such a work, you must disclose the AI-generated portions and describe your own human contributions. Any AI-generated content that goes beyond a trivial amount must be explicitly excluded from the copyright claim.
There is a flip side that people miss. Using AI-generated material doesn’t automatically shield you from infringement claims. The training data behind these models almost certainly includes copyrighted works, and the legal questions about whether AI outputs infringe those training-data authors’ copyrights are still being fought in court. If an AI output is substantially similar to a specific copyrighted work, you could still be on the hook for using it.
If You Get a DMCA Takedown Notice
Even careful people get accused. If you post content online and a copyright holder believes you’ve infringed, they can send a DMCA takedown notice to your hosting platform or internet service provider. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives platforms a legal incentive to remove accused material quickly. If they do, they’re shielded from liability. Your content can come down within hours based on nothing more than a claim.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 512 – Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online
A valid takedown notice must identify the copyrighted work, pinpoint the allegedly infringing material with enough detail for the platform to find it, include contact information for the complaining party, and contain a good-faith statement that the use isn’t authorized. The notice must also include a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the sender is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder.
If you receive a takedown notice and believe your use was lawful, because it was fair use, because the material is in the public domain, or because the claim is simply wrong, you can file a counter-notification. Your counter-notice must state under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification, and you must consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court. After the platform receives your counter-notice, it must restore your content within 10 to 14 business days unless the original complainant files a lawsuit first.13U.S. Copyright Office. Section 512 of Title 17: Resources on Online Service Provider Safe Harbors Filing a false counter-notice carries legal consequences, so be sure of your position before you respond.