What kind of pictures can you use in collages?

[Guest burusume]

I’ve been making collages (aesthetics/moodboards) out of my own pictures or pictures taken from various websites (copyrighted, I suppose) for my own entertainment, with no commercial use. I’d be curious to know if collages containing such copyrighted pictures could be sold on here, as a gig, with me, the seller, taking no credit on them, only on the work of putting them together.

What about those websites with pictures free for any use?

Thank you in advance for an answer!

[catwriter]

I’ve been making collages (aesthetics/moodboards) out of my own pictures or pictures taken from various websites (copyrighted, I suppose) for my own entertainment, with no commercial use. I’d be curious to know if collages containing such copyrighted pictures could be sold on here, as a gig, with me, the seller, taking no credit on them, only on the work of putting them together.

What about those websites with pictures free for any use?

Thank you in advance for an answer!

I’d be curious to know if collages containing such copyrighted pictures could be sold on here, as a gig, with me, the seller, taking no credit on them, only on the work of putting them together.

If you steal several cars, and combine their parts into another car, do you think it would be legal to sell that another car, as long as you don’t take the credit for actually making those cars? Or would you get arrested for car theft and an attempt to sell stolen property?

[paulmaplesden]

Generally speaking, no. Copyright law (typically) means you can’t profit from other people’s creative work. There are exceptions, specifically for some types of “Creative Commons” licenses. Some of those allow reuse of images for commercial gain, but you will often have to provide attribution to the original creator.

However, Creative Commons licenses are the exception rather than the rule. By default, any original work is under the copyright of the owner, and any unauthorized use (where you don’t have permission), especially if you make a profit, would be considered at the very least unethical, and likely illegal.

More on Creative Commons and Copyright here:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

If you do want royalty-free, copyright-free, permission-free pictures that you can use for commercial gain, I highly recommend Pixabay. It’s a free image resource, where everything is released under a CC license that allows for reuse and commercial gain, without attribution.

[pacquo]

For copyrighted material there is the notion of “fair use”.

However I don’t think that it applies to your case.
See for example https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/.

You can look for material under the public domain, or released under permissive licenses, like the Creative Commons licenses.

[Guest burusume]

I’d be curious to know if collages containing such copyrighted pictures could be sold on here, as a gig, with me, the seller, taking no credit on them, only on the work of putting them together.

If you steal several cars, and combine their parts into another car, do you think it would be legal to sell that another car, as long as you don’t take the credit for actually making those cars? Or would you get arrested for car theft and an attempt to sell stolen property?

That’s what I thought too, but I found forums and blogs where this question has met a different answer, so I decided to ask it on here too, to make sure.

[Guest burusume]

Thank you for your answers! I will look more onto websites which provide copyright-free pics, and keep the “fair use” in mind.