Fair Use, etc.
Fair Use
But does any of this matter when you can claim you are using copyright protected material in fair use? According to the U.S. Copyright Office, fair use is the “legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances.” These special circumstances include the “purpose and character of the use” particularly when using for non-profit and/or educational purposes.
That said, arguing the case that you are implementing an item in fair use in court expensive and time consuming. In my work, I’ve never needed to use a copyright protected image under fair use, aside from a handful of times it was requested directly by the company administration, who understood the liabilities in doing so.
Attribution
Even though only some Creative Common licenses require attribution, it will be helpful to you as a researcher to give full credits to all of your work. Providing a title, author, source (including archival catalog number if applicable) and license of the work will ultimately improve your records, dissuade infringement claims and help readers find the media sources independently if they are interested.
Takedown Requests
Unable to identify the copyright status of an item and the risk of the material type seems low? Creating a simple takedown notice request section in your research gives potential copyright owners a way to contact you directly to avoid legal complications.
Version Copyright
Lastly, you may encounter images which should be in public domain but are claimed by stock photography giants such as Getty Images or AP News to be under their copyright. This is because these companies have copyright over a particular print, version or photograph of the public domain work.
One example is the Mona Lisa, which is public domain because Leonardo da Vinci died more than 70 years ago. Getty would like to sell you this photograph of the painting for $500, because they have registered copyright on that print, not the actual painting.
You can also choose to use the above photograph for free, because the person who took it also made it publicly available. This is another place where good record keeping and proper attribution will pay off. As long as you can point to a copyright free version you sourced the media from, you are protected from liability.