Public Domain


During the last years numerous websites were created which offer public domain pictures for download. These are pictures where the author releases all rights, so you can use them without any restrictions. There is no need to add a name or a complicated licence tag, no links and no statements. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. And actually there are many pictures of pretty high quality, high resolution, made by skilled photographers.

Why is this so important? Not only do you have to pay for copyrighted images, they also require accurate rights management and the correct indication of the necessary data, such as licence and copyright holder, at every place where you use the image. The management involves a lot of work, and inaccuracies can lead to significant legal problems. This only works if you have a dynamic website that manages a database of licences, such as Wikipedia does. The cost of images is also a factor for non-commercial websites. The cost of one or two images would exceed the cost of hosting showcaves.com for a year. This website is non-commercial and public domain, we are not willing to spend money on images and have nothing to gain by placing an image. This restriction applies to all personal pages.

Here is a list of websites which offer public domain pictures. As the pictures are public domain each of them has the right to downlod them from other sites and use them, so actually most pictures can be found on most or all websites. In other words, it's not necessary to check them all. The is one which stands out, called SnappyGoat, which is a sort of Meta Search Engine. It does not maintain its own database, it collects public domain pictures from Wikipedia, Flickr and other sites, so it will find more pictures than the others.