I originally wrote this blog post eight years ago. I was reminded of it yesterday when I saw a similar top ten list to the one mentioned below shared by a former colleague with whom I’m Facebook friends.

This morning one of my Facebook friends posted one of those “ten signs you’re from…” Buzzfeed-like articles that sucked me in. As I looked through the article I noticed something strange about the image credits. In fact, they really were not image credits at all. The caption below the images simply reads, “Source: Google Images.” Besides not naming the owner of the image, the author of the article didn’t link to the source nor indicated that it was used by permission. I took a screenshot and added a comment to it. You can see my screenshot below. 

Click the screenshot to view it in full screen.

(Yes, you can use this screenshot if you want to share it with your students). 

Applications for Education

Between great public domain image sources like Pixabay (click here for other options) and Creative Commons image search tools there are few occasions when students should have to resort to claiming fair use to use a copyrighted image. If they do end up at that step, they should at least give proper credit to the owner of the image.