Copyright and giving credit online
Computer Science · Key Stage 2 · The School
Someone made it, and it belongs to them
A photo, a song and a piece of writing all have a creator. COPYRIGHT means that creator decides how it can be used. Anyone who just finds it online does not get to decide. Finding a picture with a search engine does not make it free to use. That rule holds however easy the picture was to find. It also holds no matter how small the project seems. A school poster follows exactly the same rule as a published book.
Content that is free to reuse
Some creators choose to share their work freely. They mark it with a licence that says so. Search tools can filter results to content labelled "free to use and share". That label matters far more than how easy an image was to find. Two images can look identical. They can still carry completely different permissions.
Giving credit properly
Even free-to-use work usually asks for CREDIT: naming who made it. A simple line is normally enough: "Photo by Name, used under [licence]". Skipping it, even on free content, often breaks the terms it was shared under. It costs one short line. It takes only a moment to add. Forgetting it is the single most common way free content gets misused.
A project that used the wrong image
A pupil's project used a photo copied straight from a random search. There was no licence check and no credit given. The photo turned out to belong to a professional photographer. That photographer had never agreed to let it be used that way. Using a labelled free-to-use image with proper credit avoids this entirely. The check takes moments. Sorting out the mistake afterwards takes far longer.