Copyright and Fair Use: Tightrope Walk or Tug-of-War?: Copyright-friendly Sources

Over 20,000,000 European cultural objects. Images include an icon indicating terms of use (varies).

"We are a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific."

Search or browse Flickr images by license type.

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.

"Permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection." Arranged by subject.

"splashbase is a search and discovery wrapper for Unsplash, a site that provides free, do whatever you want, hi-resolution photos."

Millions of freely usable media files

"It is Yale University’s goal to make digital copies of unrestricted public domain collections available for use without limitations. Yale University will not restrict use of items digitized from its museums, libraries and archives collections which have been made openly available through the University’s electronic interfaces, and which are no longer under copyright, except where other rights or restrictions apply."

"dig.ccmixter is devoted to helping you find that great music, all of which is liberally licensed under a Creative Commons license so you already have permission to use this music in your video, podcast, school project, personal music player, or where ever…"

"The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License."

Drag and drop sounds, beats, effects, and voices to create your own beatbox composition.

An online music studio with recording, effects, virtual instruments and over 600 free loops and sounds

"Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you’ve already created."

"Soungle is a free site, developed by Southern Codes, for finding all kind of sound FX and musical instruments samples on our mega online library. As different from most of similar sites, Soungle is NOT a Web search engine. It only searches in our growing monster database. Our goals are to keep it simple to use (search, preview and download) and to keep it free."

Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987. Watch the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, the Challenger explosion, and much more.

"Access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials...The EFG offers a look at and behind the scenes of filmmaking in Europe from the early days until today. The EFG facilitates online access to historical documents and leads you directly to the archives that hold the originals."

"Contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts."

"With over 12,000 movie clips, you can search, find, view, discuss and share scenes from your favorite movies."

An interesting collection of films created by federal agencies, including: the Iran Contra Hearings; the Royal Ballet of Cambodia; and several long clips of The Roswell Reports ("eyewitness accounts").

"On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free...We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other..."

"Vimeo was created by filmmakers and video creators who wanted to share their creative work, along with intimate personal moments of their everyday life. As time went on, like-minded people came to the site and built a community of positive, encouraging individuals with a wide range of video interests."