How to Use Content Without Copyright Infringement

There are four legal ways to use content without committing copyright infringement: use material that isn’t protected in the first place, use openly licensed work within its terms, qualify for fair use, or get written permission from the rights holder. Copyright attaches automatically the moment someone creates an original work,¹ so almost everything you find online or in print is protected by default. Picking the wrong path can cost you anywhere from a takedown notice to six-figure damages in federal court, so it pays to know how each path actually works before you borrow anything.

What Copyright Protects

Protection kicks in the moment an original work is fixed in a lasting form: typed into a document, painted, recorded, or saved as a file.¹ No registration, paperwork, or © symbol is required. Federal law groups protected works into eight categories: literary works, music, dramatic works, choreography, visual art, movies and audiovisual works, sound recordings, and architectural works.² Blog posts, phone photos, podcast episodes, and code all fit somewhere in that list.

The rights holder controls reproduction, adaptations, distribution, public performance, and public display.¹ Using someone’s protected work without authorization steps on one or more of those, and that’s what triggers an infringement claim.

One line matters more than any other: copyright protects the specific expression of an idea, not the idea itself.² Anyone can write a detective story set in a haunted house. Copying another writer’s characters, dialogue, or plot from a haunted-house mystery is infringement.

Content You Can Use Without Permission

Some material was never protected, or its protection has lapsed. Using it carries no infringement risk, which makes this the lowest-effort path when you can find what you need.

Public Domain Works

A work enters the public domain when its copyright expires, when the creator dedicates it there, or when it was never eligible to begin with. As of January 1, 2026, works published in 1930 or earlier are in the public domain in the United States. Novels, music, films, and artwork from 1930 and before can be copied, adapted, and distributed freely.

Watch for one trap: new editions of public domain works can carry their own copyright. A 1928 novel is free to use, but a 2024 translation of that novel with original footnotes and commentary may still be protected. The underlying text is yours to use. The translator’s creative additions are not.

Federal Government Works

Works created by the U.S. federal government are not eligible for copyright protection.³ That covers federal agency reports, NASA photographs, congressional research documents, census data, and military publications. You can reproduce and distribute them freely. State and local government works are a different question, and whether they carry copyright depends on the jurisdiction. Don’t assume the federal rule extends downward.

Facts, Ideas, and Short Phrases

Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, methods, or systems.⁴ A historical date, a scientific finding, or a cooking technique belongs to everyone. What you can’t copy is the particular written account or creative presentation of that fact.

Names, titles, slogans, and short phrases are too brief for copyright.⁵ A book title, band name, product name, or catchphrase can’t be copyrighted. Some of these may be protected under trademark law instead, which is a separate framework with its own rules.

Creative Commons and Open Licenses

Millions of works online are published under Creative Commons licenses, which let creators grant broad public permission while keeping some rights reserved. These licenses are legally enforceable and widely used across photography, music, educational content, and open-source projects.⁶

Every Creative Commons license combines up to four conditions:⁷

Attribution (BY) — you must credit the creator; appears in every CC license.
ShareAlike (SA) — if you adapt the work, your version must carry the same license.
NonCommercial (NC) — noncommercial uses only.
NoDerivatives (ND) — share as-is; no adaptations or remixes.

A “CC BY-NC” license, for instance, lets you use the work free of charge as long as you credit the creator and don’t use it commercially. The most permissive option, “CC BY,” only requires attribution. Read the specific license attached to any work before using it. Breaking the license terms strips your permission away and leaves you exposed to an infringement claim as if the work had no license at all.

Fair Use

Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without the owner’s permission, typically for criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, or research.⁸ It is the most flexible tool available, and the most unpredictable. Fair use is an affirmative defense: you raise it after being accused of infringement, and you carry the burden of proving your use qualifies. No checklist guarantees you’re safe.

Courts weigh four factors when evaluating a fair use claim.⁹

Purpose and Character of the Use

Nonprofit, educational, and noncommercial uses lean toward fair use; commercial uses lean against it. More importantly, courts ask whether the new work is “transformative,” meaning it adds something new with a different purpose or character rather than simply substituting for the original.⁹ A book review quoting a passage to critique the author’s argument is transformative. Reposting a whole photograph to illustrate the same kind of article the photographer would license it for is not.

Nature of the Original Work

Fair use claims are stronger when the copied work is factual rather than highly creative. Using a passage from a technical manual is more defensible than copying song lyrics. Unpublished works get extra protection, which makes fair use harder to establish if the original hasn’t been released.⁹

Amount Used

Taking a small, unremarkable portion is more likely to qualify than copying a work’s central element. This factor measures quality as well as quantity. A few seconds of a song can still weigh against you if those seconds are the most recognizable hook.⁸

Effect on the Market

If your use functions as a substitute for the original and reduces the copyright holder’s revenue or licensing opportunities, that cuts strongly against fair use.⁹ Courts look at whether the new use competes with the original or serves a different audience entirely.

No single factor decides the case. A court weighs all four together, and the analysis shifts with every set of facts. This is where instinct tends to fail. “I only used 30 seconds” and “I gave credit” are common justifications that don’t carry the day on their own. If you’re relying on fair use for anything commercially significant, get a legal opinion before you publish.

Getting Permission From the Copyright Holder

When the content is clearly protected and fair use doesn’t fit, you need a license or written permission from the owner. This is the most legally secure route, because an explicit agreement removes ambiguity about what you’re allowed to do.

Finding the Owner

Check the work itself for a copyright notice. A proper notice has the © symbol (or the word “Copyright”), the year of first publication, and the owner’s name.¹⁰ Notice has been optional since 1989, so plenty of protected works won’t have one.

When there’s no notice, the U.S. Copyright Office runs a searchable public records database covering registrations from 1898 forward.¹¹ For books, the publisher usually handles licensing. Music rights typically run through performing rights organizations or the publisher on the recording. Photographs are trickier because ownership often stays with the photographer, not the publication where the image appeared.

Making the Request

Contact the owner with a specific description of how you plan to use the work. Spell out the medium (print, digital, broadcast), the geographic scope, the duration of use, and whether you’ll modify the original. Vague requests get vague answers, or no answer at all.

Many publishers and media companies have licensing departments or online portals for exactly this purpose. Stock photo and music platforms exist to simplify common cases. Fees vary widely with the work’s commercial value and the scope of your intended use.

Whatever you agree to, get it in writing. A signed license protects both sides and prevents disputes later about what was authorized. Even an email exchange confirming the terms beats a verbal understanding.

AI-Generated Content

Content generated entirely by artificial intelligence, without meaningful human creative input, cannot receive copyright protection in the United States. The Copyright Office requires that a work be “the product of human creativity” to qualify for registration, and federal courts have upheld this position.¹² In March 2026, the Supreme Court declined to revisit this rule, leaving the human authorship requirement in place.

The practical situation is odd. Pure AI output sits in a copyright no-man’s-land: nobody owns it, so your infringement risk from using it is minimal, but you also can’t claim exclusive rights over it. Anyone else can use the same output.

Works that blend AI output with genuine human creativity are treated differently. If you select, arrange, or substantially modify AI-generated content, the human-authored elements can qualify for copyright. The AI portions remain unprotectable on their own.¹² If you register a work that includes AI-generated content, you have to disclose that fact and exclude those portions from the claim. Failing to disclose can void the registration.

One risk catches people off guard: AI tools trained on copyrighted material can produce output that closely resembles existing protected works. The fact that an AI made it doesn’t shield you from an infringement claim by the original rights holder. If the output is substantially similar to a protected work, you can still be liable.

What Happens If You Infringe

Financial exposure for copyright infringement is steep enough to deserve a clear-eyed look. Even without intent, a copyright holder can pursue civil and, in some cases, criminal remedies.

DMCA Takedowns

If you publish something online that someone believes infringes their copyright, you’ll usually encounter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s takedown process long before a lawsuit. A copyright holder sends a formal notice to the platform hosting your content, and the platform must remove or disable access quickly to keep its own protection from liability.¹³

If your content is taken down and you believe the removal was a mistake or your use was lawful, you can file a counter-notification. The counter-notice must include your signature, identify the removed material, and include a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe the removal was in error. Once the platform receives a valid counter-notice, it must restore the content within 10 to 14 business days unless the copyright holder files a lawsuit in that window.¹⁴

Civil Damages

A copyright owner can seek either their actual losses (plus any profits you earned from the infringement) or opt for statutory damages. Statutory damages run from $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, at the court’s discretion. Those numbers move sharply based on intent. Willful infringement pushes the ceiling to $150,000 per work. Genuinely innocent infringement, where you had no reason to know, drops the floor to $200 per work.¹⁵

On top of damages, a court can award attorney’s fees to the winning side at its discretion.¹⁶ In copyright litigation, legal fees often match or exceed the damages, so this remedy carries real weight.

Criminal Penalties

Willful infringement can also trigger criminal prosecution. Federal law makes it a crime to infringe copyright for commercial advantage or financial gain, to reproduce or distribute copies worth more than $1,000 within a 180-day period, or to distribute a work intended for commercial release by posting it on a public network.¹⁷ Penalties are set under federal sentencing law and can include imprisonment.

Making Your Own

The most reliable way to avoid infringement is to make something new. Original content gives you full ownership and eliminates any need to navigate licenses, fair use arguments, or permission requests. That sounds obvious, but it’s the only approach with zero risk of a third-party claim.

Drawing inspiration from broad themes, styles, or genres is fine. Copyright doesn’t own genres, artistic movements, or general storytelling formats. Trouble comes from borrowing too heavily from a specific work: mimicking distinctive character traits, copying unique plot structures, or closely paraphrasing someone’s prose. The line between inspiration and copying isn’t always bright, but a useful gut check is whether a reader familiar with the original would recognize yours as derived from it. If the answer is yes, you’ve probably crossed it. Independent creation, where your work comes from your own effort rather than someone else’s protected expression, remains the most secure foundation for anything you publish.

1
U.S. Copyright Office. What Is Copyright
2
GovInfo. 17 U.S.C. 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 105 – Subject Matter of Copyright
4
U.S. Copyright Office. What Does Copyright Protect?
5
U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 33 – Works Not Protected by Copyright
6
Creative Commons. License Enforcement
7
Creative Commons. About CC Licenses
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 107 – Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use
9
U.S. Copyright Office. U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index
10
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Notice
11
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Public Records Portal
12
Federal Register. Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 512 – Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 512 – Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 505 – Remedies for Infringement: Costs and Attorneys Fees
17
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 506 – Criminal Offenses