If you stumble upon a source that would be perfect for your project or personal research, it can be an exciting discovery, but it’s not as simple as copying and pasting the source or photograph and using it as your own. Copyright, licensing, and terms of use play a big role in sources you find and want to apply to your work. Copyright, in a basic sense, is someone having ownership over content and having sole access to decisions about the reproduction of that content. When someone posts a picture or document online and places a copyright, you won’t find that content in every scholar’s book and project without someone gaining direct permission. Copyright can come with stipulations, and regulations govern the public domain and fair use. When you have a copyright, people may have certain creative freedoms over your work. In a graph by Mary Minow via Peter Hirtle on Section 107 and fair use, we learn guidelines for understanding what falls under “Fair use.” If someone uses an image or document without monetary gain and, to a certain extent, transforms it, that falls under fair use. This also includes factual interpretation of the content and using a small amount of the content for research purposes. Copyrighted content can fall under fair use in certain circumstances, but these restrictions differ from public domain rules. Public domain means documents or content no longer qualify for copyright protection. This doesn’t mean it was never copyrighted, only that its copyright expired after a certain period of time. This time period could range from the author’s age plus seventy years to one hundred and twenty years after publication if the author is unknown. After a certain date, if no one renews the copyright, the content will fall under fair use for the general public. (Mary Minow, Peter Hirtle) The best way to understand the content you are looking at, and whether it falls under certain regulations and licensing, is to look for contact information for an archive or even the author. Usually, the details section or terms of use explains how to use the sources correctly without risking a copyright violation. Each source is different, and understanding the terms and where to find accurate information about a source’s rights status is critical to producing legitimate material.