Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Finding images tutorial (section)

== Do I need to know the copyright and licensing status of the image? ==
'''Yes!'''

Depending on the desired image, the copyright may be expired due to the age of the image. In the US, copyrights of images published before [[{{Not-PD-US-expired-min-year}}]] are expired. This also applies to many old paintings and photos. Such images can be safely used for Wikipedia even if there is a copyright notice on the page. There are also other ways ''around'' a copyright, for example [[Wikipedia:Fair use|fair use]], but this is a legal minefield and should be avoided if possible (see [[Wikipedia:Copyrights|Copyrights]]). Historic photographs are almost always grayscale, so you can speed up your search by using an [http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search?hl=en advanced image search] with the limitation to ''Return only images in grayscale''.

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A search for [http://images.google.com/images?q=Stetson*++OR+ten-gallon+OR+cowboy&ie=UTF-8&hl=en Stetson*  OR ten-gallon OR cowboy] returns many images. Limiting the search to [http://images.google.com/images?as_q=&svnum=10&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=Stetson*++ten-gallon+cowboy&as_eq=&imgsz=&as_filetype=&imgc=gray&as_sitesearch=&safe=images grayscale], and say hello to [http://www.cowboyhathistory.org/legends/ Buffalo Bill]. [[Buffalo Bill]] died in [[1917]], so any photo of him taken before [[{{Not-PD-US-expired-min-year}}]] almost certainly has its copyrights expired.
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