Clipart Acquisition

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The purpose of this wiki page is to keep track of the Open Clip Art Library's progress of acquiring, converting and archiving the huge source of Public Domain artwork that is available on the internet.

Sources We Are Gathering From:

Government PD Images

A great source of public domain imagery is the United States goverment. All artwork produced by the US government and its many departments are open to be mined for the Open Clip Art Library.

According to the United States Code Title 17, Section 105, copyright protection is not provided for any work produced by the United States Government. However, if the government document contains any materials produced by sources other than the United States Government, this material may be protected by copyright. You will need to contact the producer of the material in order to obtain permission or details on the information it contains.

So this means, that even though a US government department has created images, you still need to contact them to ensure that there is absolutely no copyright on the artwork.

Other countries may have this same view on their government developed work, however this needs to be researched.

Please Research if certain governments do the same as the US Government and release their artwork into the public domain. Put the results of your research and sources in the table below.

Government Image Copyright Policy Source(s)
United States Majority of images in the public domain, still need to double check image copyright status though. US Copyright Law(section 105)
Australia Government work is protected by copyright. Attorney General's Office
Thailand Government work is not copyrightable Wikipedia with references
Misc. Countries Wikipedia article on Licensing covers many other countries [1]
CCCP/USSR Much dispute regarding copyright situation. see long discussion here


Basic Guidelines for Mining Clipart

  • Make sure you contact the owner / publisher of the artwork to check the copyright status.
  • Try to record any responses to Public Domain queires here on the wiki.
  • When uploading to ccHost, as a tag, enter in the source of the image. for example, if you mined the image from the EPA, use the tag epa. This will help us keep track of mined images.
  • In the description of the image on ccHost, make sure you state where the image was mined from, and also a source URL if applicable.


Possible sources for clipart mining

Below are some possible locations to get public domain clip art. The copyright status of the images on these sites is currently unknown to us at the Open Clip Art Library, so some research will need to be done before we can start mining these sources.

US Government sources

Other Image Repositories

Also, try to search for "public domain clip art" and "public domain wmf" and "eps"

  • Public Doimain Images Several thousand copyright friendly digital images nicely organized in folders, free for any personal and/or commercial use, credit or back link is not required.

Book Repositories

Black Listed

Please do not use these sites for any clipart acquisition. These specific sites are listed so that you can be aware of which sites to avoid mining from.

www.wmfclipart.com& www.kamsart.com

Objectional Statement: "You can use above free clipart images for personal or commercial use but you cannot sell or give to others. You can refer them to this free clipart site."

Explanation: This site's statement puts exceptions on this clipart usage. OCAL cannot use clipart taken from here. They have also been involved in taking non-PD clipart and therefore the entire collection is in doubt. Please do not mine clipart from this site.

www.freeclipartnow.com

Clipart from http://www.freeclipartnow.com cannot be accepted. Taken from http://www.freeclipartnow.com/termsofuse.php on 16 June 2010, at 5:46pm

Objectional Statement:

  • "Company logos and trademarks can be used under "fair use" policy.
  • You may NOT use any component of our clipart or site content to produce what could be directly or indirectly considered a competitive venture against us."

Explanation: Copyrighted Logos might be valid for fair use (Although that claim is very suspect in itself), however "Fair Use" is not valid for Public Domain. You cannot use or upload any copyrighted or trademarked logos to the Open Clipart Library. Copyrighted Logos will be removed from the Library if found in the database. Any clipart that has logos or trademarks included in the design will be hidden and the author given a fair time to remove the logo and re-upload the adjusted clipart.

Because of the second statement about "Competition Venture" this also puts a restriction on the clipart which invalidates the clipart for OCAL upload. Now technically, they cannot say this about Public Domain clipart, since Public Domain is Public Domain. What they are trying to do is protect their effort in making their collection, and we are requesting that people do not upload clipart from this site.

www.radicalgraphics.org

An anti-authority website with some fantastic clipart, unfortunatly, they take graphics from other places without permission. While the artwork might be useful, we cannot accept clipart taken from here. There have been three recorded copyright infringements from this site, and therefore the entire collection is in doubt. Please do not use upload any clipart from this site.

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