by Ted Kuik

Suppose you want to enhance your site with a tiled background, animated gif, static image. or news headlines. Basically you have three choices:

(1) Create the content yourself.

(2) Pay someone to create custom content for you.

(3) Find a free or low-cost source.

While there are many situations where the first two approaches are appropriate, this article will focus on the third (free or low-cost) option. Let's begin by ruling out the idea of just scanning in something created by someone else or grabbing it off the interent without any permission from the person(s) who created the item. It's illegal, immoral, and can lead to one's having to pay severe financial penalties for copyright infringement. Besides, there is plenty of content out there where the owners have granted permission for use or items which are in the public domain.

One option would be visiting the local (or online ) bookstore or library and purchasing a book of "royalty free images" (or "royalty free music", etc.). Using this method, one can often gain legal access to top notch material at a very economical price. In most cases there will probably be some restrictions as to what you can or can not do with the material. You would most likely not be allowed to do anything which would compete directly with the book (like grouping a large number of the images together and redistributing them as a collection for instance). Be sure to check the book for what is and is not allowed.

Web sites offering to let you use their content for free are another good source for such material. Here at CoolNotions.com we offer Animated Gifs, Background tiles (in regular, deluxe, and small sizes), as well as static clip art. A number of news sites like ABCNews.com allow you to carry their headlines thru RSS syndication. ToonFever.com has link code you can set up to display a weekly cartoon. And the list goes on. Type "free animated gifs" into any one of the major search engines and you're likely to see more material than you can shake a cursor at. Once again, be sure to read and comply with any restrictions on the use of the material offered.

A third potential source of free content is goverment web sites. Most of what the U.S. government puts out on the internet (on the NASA website for instance) is in the public domain (not copyrighted) and is therefore legally available for you to use. Exercise caution though, as there are some restrictions. For instance as stated on the NASA site, "If a NASA image includes an identifiable person, using the image for commercial purposes may infringe that person's right of privacy or publicity, and permission should be obtained from the person." (This "right of privacy" concern would apply of course not only to NASA images, but to other public domain images as well). A good starting point to explore the (HUGE) volume of material the U.S. government has placed online is the government's own web portal, FirstGov.gov. State and local goverments will often have more restrictions on the material they post online, so I am less enthusiastic about them as a source of public domain material. In any event, read any terms of use carefully, make sure you understand any restrictions, and consult a qualified lawyer if in doubt.

The foregoing only begins to scratch the surface of the massive amount of free content available for use. With that in mind, I've provided some additional links for further reading:

Copyright.gov - The web site of the United States Copyright Office - Information on copyright and related intellectual property issues.

CPDL.org - The Choral Public Domain Library, a web site devoted to free choral sheet music.

FreeChristianContent - A website "designed to assist Christian webmasters in locating suitable free content for their web sites."

PDInfo.com - Information on public domain music, copyright issues, royalty free music you can license (for a fee).

TheFreesite.com - A directory of internet sites offering free products.