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"The difference between "copyright free" and "royalty free" Given that at least part of the controversy surrounding the painting which was awarded the American Watercolour Society Gold Medal this year concerns copyright I thought it might be helpful to outline the difference between "copyright free" and "royalty free" - as this seems to be something people get confused about. What is copyright? I'm not going to try and define copyright as such - as meaning varies depending on which country's laws prevail over the work in question. You can find out more about copyright and access the different websites providing legal definitions in my information site Copyright and Orphan Artworks - Resources for Artists For the purposes of this post, the wikipedia summary will suffice. Copyright is a form of intellectual property which gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation; after which time the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete. Some jurisdictions also recognise "moral rights" of the creator of a work, such as the right to be credited for the work Wikpedia - copyright"

Originally shared by Julia Hollins on 15 Jul 13. The original post was removed and this one shared instead, due to technical issue with the original post. This site provides free music, photos and videos. The second criterion is it had to be a repository. Repositories are large storage spaces for indexing, retrieving and managing visual information. The user may find a database using any of the text-based meta-search engines. These were extremely helpful in locating the three sources used for evaluation. The third criterion used to evaluate online video and photo repositories was whether or not the content progressed into developing a visual information retrieval system. Some of the methods for retrieving digital images and videos were easier than others. Some queries used features such as colors, textures, shapes, motions and spatiotemporal compositions (Chang, Smith, Beigi, & Benitez, 1997). Lastly, the fourth criterion used to evaluate the online photo repositories was whether it had multimedia features. The repository databases classify information according to the domains that use them. For example, online repositories used by museums, libraries, archives and photo stock differ by the following features: 1) automation, 2) abstraction, 3) content collection, and 4) generability and categorization.

Users of this site should be advised that resources are royalty free. Please check the legal details on the following page: http://www.pond5.com/legal/

Musopen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. They provide recordings,sheet music and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Their mission is to "set music free". At Musopen, they obtain recordings of public domain music that have no copyrights so that visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Most of the music is of classical piano or symphony pieces. Clips can be searched by Composer, Performer, Instrument, Period or Form. Downloading clips requires users to have an account, which is free. The audience for this site is open ended. Anyone from Elementary School students to the oldest of the population can easily discover music which can be used in any project they wish. It is very easy to search and download the .mp3 version of the music for use in project creation. The quality of the offerings it is excellent. Additionally, being Classical in nature, they do not "get in the way" of an overall project. This is extraordinarily beneficial if using the music as a background piece. This blessing is also the limitation; you do not have a wide range of genres from which to choose. If you want something outside the Classical field, you should investigate other free-music sites. To test this resource, I created a test podcast with the free application Audacity in which I spoke into a microphone to record my voice. I was then able to add a piece from this site as background music for the podcast. It worked very well. Teachers and students will find this to be just one of the many uses for music from this site. It is appropriate for similar presentations whether they be Prezi productions or videos published on YouTube-type sites. The only limitation is the range of possible music styles. If a classical piece is your preferred choice, however, Musopen is a wonderful site to visit

Download royalty free music for use in films, YouTube, and other projects, with no copyright restrictions.

This site offers royalty free background music for just $0.99 for each track. In addition, the site has over 1,000 free music teaks available for download. The site offers numerous music genres to pick from and will let you hear a sample of the track before you download. I have used this site in the past for videos and have been very pleased with the selection of music this site offers and how easy the site is to use. This site may be best suited for older students, but could be used with elementary aged students with teacher assistance. This site is great source to use when helping students create video projects. For example, last semester I created a documentary video focusing on the Cherokee Native Americas. Jewel Beat had several tracks of Native American background music to choose from. Add this music to my video made my work more authentic. I think student will enjoy being able to pick out their own music to add to their video without worrying about infringing on copyright holders. One possible problem I see with this site is that most of the music tracks cost $0.99. While this is not very much, this could lead to problems when helping a room full of students create videos especially since it would involve the use of billing a credit card. It may be best to just mention this source to your students as a possible choice.

This site provides a wealth of royalty free video footage for use in advertising, blogging, websites and even presentations. This resource provides video, photographic and audio resources on a royalty-free basis. This means that the user pays for the initial download of the content, without having to pay the original photographer or artist for each use of the material. The terms of agreement on this website also provides a $10,000 Legal Guarantee that protects the user of the content up to that amount. I personally, would use this site with middle and high school geography students. In many cases, geography falls into a social studies or science class if I recall correctly. Many of the video clips available have amazing video shots of different landforms and natural formations of nature. In order to show multiple sequences of various land forms, this site would be great for having instant access to incredible video clips. The quality of the work in the video portion of this website is remarkable. All of the content is shot in high quality and is downloadable in a range of size and quality. This site allows the for user to download in various frames per second as well to determine the exact quality available to the user for download.

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-program/ Royalty free music is a paid website that allows educational institutions free access to their website through their Free Music for Education Program. The major obstacle in using this website would be getting over the hurdle or having technology services approve the website and have a link placed on the school's website for students to obtain access. Teachers can use the website to teach students about the copyright rules and laws Once approved students of all ages would have a huge catalogue of sound effects and downloadable music and from a variety of genres at their fingertips. .

Educators who wish to use resources from this site need to visit this page: http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-resources.html

This is an archive of images that can be used without worrying about copyright. Some images are free and some have to be paid for. In order to use an image you simply click the download button. There are over a thousand different pictures to choose from. This would make this resource wonderful for teachers of any grade level or content area. You simply type in or search for the type of image you are looking for and browse for the one that you like the best. The images are high quality and there is a plethora of images files and types.

This site contains copyright free/royalty free images. The small sizes (267 x 400) are free but if you'd like a larger size you will pay from $3.00 to $10.00. If you use the images, you must have an acknowledgement to FreeDigitalPhotos.net and the image creator. You can search for images by photo, illustration, or ID. You can also sign up to be a member and/or a contributor. Teachers of all content areas could find useful photos to enhance their lessons.

This site has an immense amount of images that are copyright and royalty free and of good quality. Teachers at any level could use them to engage student and enhance learning by incorporating them into their lesson in presentations or as conversation startes for a wide variety of topics. Student can also download and use these images for their own visuals for projects and presentations. For each image used, you must publish a credit to the artist. They only issue I think may come arise with that is if students are using this resource to find images that they could use they may forget to acknowledge the artist. One of the parts of this site that I really loved was it tells you how to recongnize the artist in the media you are using the artwork in. A great teaching moment!

Originally shared by Julia Hollins on 15 Jul 13. The original post was removed and this one shared instead, due to technical issue with the original post. Thumb creator is source for royal free clip art. The first criterion used in selecting this website is that it had open access. The term "open access" is a new technology used with digital repositories. Most universities and libraries use repositories for educational purposes in hopes of becoming more engaged in developing scholarly communication. Second, open access is defined as free availability of scholarly literature on the public Internet, permitting anyone to read, download, copy, distribute, or print in full the text without restrictions (other than to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited Scherlen & Robinson,2008, p. 58 (as cited in Shields, Rangarajan, & Stewart, 2012). The clip art is royalty free and is apart of the open access. I thought it was a good resource for this class assignment.

Photo laboratory - this is a collection of exclusive photo images of high resolution. You can download any stock image at no cost or buy photo under royalty-free licence. This is a great resource for middle and high school students who are making a website or any other fictitious marketing products and need some "real-looking" pictures to include but maybe do not have the time or resources to take the pictures themselves. I think this could be used for any subject area as they have a wide range of pictures including all types of people and objects. I think it would be especially useful in my business classes where my students are always wanting high quality photos for their projects. Directing them to this website would be a great alternative to searching Google which is their first "go-to" search engine. The thing that I liked the most about this site is that the pictures do not look fake. They look more like what you would actually take yourself so I think that would be a positive and a draw to get more students to use them.

Resources in this site are free for any non-commercial use. Commercial use requires fee payments. Users are directed to check the Legal page for specific details.

Soundbible.com is an audio source that provides copyright free sound effects and clips. It also provides royalty free sounds at only .10 per sound. This site would be great to explore if teaching a 10th grade world history or 11th grade U.S. history class. (It has sounds from specific war weapons/planes, etc.) However, it can be used with many other grades and students of varying abilities. It offers nature sounds, animal sounds, etc. These sounds can be used in a PowerPoint or other presentation and the sounds offered are great quality. Be sure to read the following before using their photos: http://soundbible.com/about.php .

Stock.Xchng is a free top-level domain stock photo site from Hungary. The site allows images to be uploaded and shared among members free from copyright and royalties. It is appropriate for educational use in middle and high schools for students and teachers creating various forms of digital products. Some contributors require that they be notified upon use of their images. These individuals may not ask for compensation but merely want to build reference lists of where their images were used. The site requires an active email account to register and activate an account for downloads.

The photos are high quality and categorized for browsing or there is a search bar to aid in ease of locating a useable image.

Images on this site are protected under International Copyright Laws (see Terms of Use page), so users be appropriately advised. Images are royalty free.

This resource is for usage of images that could down loaded for the classroom. It could be utilized for making craft projects or graphics for science in the fourth grade. It has graphic photos of animals, insects, plants, and more. It could be useful to other elementary grade levels if they are creating animal or insect habitats and ecosystems. It could be used for other subjects as well. This is a royalty free website where all clip art images are free, with the exception of the banner, and any photographs that will be utilized for resale or pleasure purposes. It is also suggested that the use of more than six of the images not be used on one project. Images may be sold as collage sheets or pintable's as long as the six image rule is adhered to.

Animation Factory is one of my most favorite animation related websites. It contains a variety of .jpg, and .gif. Users can set up an account for free however, they will have to pay for a membership. Once they have access to the objects, the user is able to use graphics at will for their needed purpose. It is royalty free as the author is not expected, other than their membership fees, to make additional payments if in fact they make money from their website, project, etc. that they produce. The intended audience are professionals in a plethora of fields. There are graphics displayed that are related to business, technology, education, healthcare and a number of other fields. There are three levels of membership. A gold membership is 59.95 and you have access to Animated Clipart, Media Elements, and Tiled Backgrounds. A platinum membership is 99.95 and users have access to all tools on the Gold level and Power Clipart, PowerPoint Backgrounds, PowerPoint Templates, and Video Backgrounds. Lastly, the pro membership is 199.95. The user has access to all tools on the gold and platinum level, and access to Flash, HD Video Backgrounds, Sound Effects, Sound and Music, and Video Elements. Each membership payment is good for one year from the start date. The quality of the graphics is phenomenal and can be used continuously on website, reports and etc. due to the high resolution provided by the website's download tools.

Users of resources on this site are advised to refer to the policy, web site terms, and licensing pages: http://www.animationfactory.com/en/company/policies.html, http://www.animationfactory.com/en/company/terms.html, http://www.animationfactory.com/en/company/licensing.html

This is a site for royalty-free images and other media for use in language classes. "The REALIA Project publishes faculty-reviewed media for the teaching and study of modern languages and cultures. Faculty and students at all levels are encouraged to contribute materials to our searchable, online database. The focus of the REALIA Project is realia: Materials which convey the everyday life of different cultures" (REALIA). After looking through a variety of categories, these photos would be great for a world literature class, history, or economics, etc. This is a royalty-free faculty-reviewed database of images contributed by teachers and students (College and Secondary) of diverse cultural and academic backgrounds. This site is more focused towards modern language based material (for teaching/learning modern language), but states they are open to other content areas. One of the unique characteristics of REALIA is that it was designed with Pedagogy in mind (provides some guidance for instructional integration). The images are exportable to Power Points or individual websites. Another beneficial attribute of this site is the ability to translate the images into English (there are many images that have writings in multiple languages).

Soundzabound is website that has royalty free music for schools. offers a variety of music, audio themes, and sound effects for all levels of education. Such music can be used for podcasts, PowerPoint, videos, video yearbooks, digital storytelling, web design, and so much more. There are different types of license that can be purchased. A school for purchase a site license for teachers and students or a the district make a purchase for everyone in the district to use. Middle schools and high schools would benefit from this site because they can use such sounds to create a product for competitive events.

Can Stock Photo is a royalty free stock photography agency that offers professional stock images that are affordable and accessible to everyone. Over 10,000 top quality images are added each day from the world's best photographers and artists. You don't have to have an account or subscription. Business education teachers and students can use the images to create PowerPoint presentations or websites. All images are for non-commercial use only.

All images in this site are under International Copyright Protection. Prior to using images, users are advised to refer to the Terms and Conditions page, found here: http://www.canstockphoto.com/terms_conditions.php.