How To Use An Image Without Copyright Infringement. But what you should know is that using a copyrighted image without permission could land you a $25,000 fine, plus legal fees and damages! A licence gives permission to another person to use the copyright work in specified ways that would, without that licence, be an infringement of the copyright.

In theory then, by taking your suggestions, if i wanted to do a line drawing of a dog, i would reference several pictures of dogs, and use a little from each photo, this creating my own image. The copyright limitation is intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest by allowing certain limited uses that could otherwise be considered infringement. 6 best practices for legally using google images 1.