Does Anybody Know of a Truly Free Clip Art Site?

[Littlescoop]

In moving forward, I want to be sure any clip art my company uses is indeed free clip art and no one, like Getty, can come after me for infringement.  So does anyone know any sites that offer free clip art?  I researched Microsoft Free Clip Art and at face value it appears to offer free clip art, not referencing or requesting any fee to download.  However, I found on another site mention that Microsoft's offer of free clip art pertains only to personal use and one cannot use it on their business site.  So....I am more than a bit leery and hesitant in downloading any new clip art to replace the images I've removed.  I don't have the types of images I need readily at hand in-house.  If anyone does know of a truly free clip art site that allows use of their free clip art by companies, great!  Please share.  If anyone knows of a pay for use site that has a good reputation and isn't going to present future headaches for unintentionally infringement, I'm open to that too!  Thanks so much!

[Littlescoop]

Oh...I should also include, if anyone knows of a good safe clip art program one can purchase to use for their company website.  Thanks!

[Oscar Michelen]

Cant help you with the clip are site, but if you buy a clip art program, make sure you actually read the End User License Agreement (EULA) to see what use you are allowed for the clip art pieces. Also never throw it out so you can always prove you had license at the time you used them and that you used them under the permitted uses contained in the EULA..

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

The days are "free" are over in my opinion, reading the EULA would help if you can understand it. I've resorted to creating my own artwork, taking my own iimages, and if it's something beyond my scope I hire a graphic artist to create the artwork needed and also have said artist sign over the copyright to me, which is kept on file..I'm probably a bit over the top, but thats how I roll! 

[Matthew Chan]

I agree with Buddhapi. I know it will be hard for some to be self-sufficient and not depend on 3rd-party materials.  It is best to star weaning off of stock photos in my opinion.  Many photographers have become freakish in their attitude and I prefer just to stay out of their way altogether.

A valuable resource is http://fiverr.com where you can get a variety of services of $5.00 including some basic customized graphics! It won't be overly sophisticated but what do you expect for $5.00?

Matthew

[SoylentGreen]

Some good points made here by all.

Look at where we've ended up.
Many of us need the products, and we're certainly willing to pay for them.
But, I can see that we're all very leery of purchasing images these days.

As buddhapi says, people would feel more confident if they could decipher the EULA.
Sometimes, one would have to really know their stuff to be sure that no infringement is ever made.

The price of making one mistake (even a small one) can be pretty high.

I firmly believe that the demand letter programs are hurting the stock image business.
One needn't even receive a demand letter to be scared off.  Existing customers and prospects everywhere are hearing about this.

S.G.





 

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

Yeah the parallels to the record industry and he RIAA are unmistakable. The leaders in the stock footage industry have chosen a business model that has them suing and threatening to sue their current and potential customers. We all saw how well that worked out for the record industry.

For my part I was closing in on spending around $1000 a year on stock footage. I now make sure that none of that goes to Getty, Masterfile or iStockPhoto. Furthermore, I have shared my experience with other designers, web developers and animators. I'm pretty sure that hearing about my experience has steered them away from using these companies.

Next month I will be giving a talk in front of 50 to 60 Drupal developers. Part of the talk will be about making sure developers and publishers have the rights to the content they publish. I'm sure the experience of ELI members will be featured in this talk.

Although I think it is a good idea to produce any imagery yourself, that is not always practical. I posted my list of sites that claim to offer public domain images at http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/index.php/topic,2153.0.html. I hope other people will share sites that they use as well.

[JPicker]

In this day and age, the only way you can be absolutely certain any images used on your web site are "clean" is to create them yourself or have a graphic designer create them from scratch. I no longer trust ANY site or company that claims to offer free clip art or free images. How can you be 100% certain? Can you chance taking their word? Will they be there for you if you receive a demand letter from one of the intellectual property companies?

I just finished completely re-designing my company's web site - a process that took several months - and while it was a pain and very time consuming to create all the images used on the site from scratch, at least I can sleep at night knowing NONE of the copyright "police" are going to come after me because I can absolutely prove ownership. Having been a recipient of the infamous "Getty Letter" nearly a year ago for several postage stamp sized images (and hiring Oscar) I don't ever want to give any of these over zealous and extortionist companies the opportunity to try and intimidate me again.

I know this is extreme, but unless you have a need to have commercial looking graphics/images on a web site, don't bother. Instead create your own. It's easy enough to do - just time consuming. You have to factor in the amount of time to create these images vs. the stress factor from receiving an unreasonable demand letter.