When looking for professional images online, you quickly make a find. Digitally literate people know how to use these images and which rights of use and licences apply. How images from the web may be used depends on two things: how you want to use them and how they are licensed. In general, every work on the internet, meaning each image, song and text, is protected by copyright. This means that whoever created a work decides on how it may be used. This may even apply to particularly original tweets, i.e. status messages on social networks. Works without special labelling may only be used or downloaded for private use, but not distributed.

If you want to use images publicly, you have to ask the creator for an explicit permission to do so. Free use of works without consulting the creator is permitted under Austrian copyright law for purposes of administration, administration of justice or education. In addition, you are allowed to use images that have been openly licensed by the creator. The abbreviation for the licence with which the image is marked tells you which forms of use are permitted. For example, the creator may allow others to share, publish or even edit the image.

You can find out about the specific licence terms here. When using licensed images, the creator has to be named too. Websites like pexels, pixabay and unsplash offer numerous openly licensed images for free. You are also on the safe side when buying the rights to use images, for example from Shutterstock or iStock. You can also use the search filter in the Google Image Search to have images displayed according to usage rights. As you can see, there are many ways to use images without committing any copyright infringements.