The Virtual War Memorial reminds all users of the importance of ensuring that any material, such
as images, submitted to the memorial complies with copyright requirements. Please note that this
does not constitute formal legal advice.
Copyright is an important consideration for everyone. It allows creators such as authors,
photographers, musicians, artists, videographers and filmmakers to control how their work is used.
It also protects creators from inappropriate or unauthorised use of their material.
Unless you are absolutely clear that an image is free of copyright restrictions or you have written permission to upload it and for that image to be used on a continuing basis, please do not make a submission.
If an image has been released under a Creative Commons License, please make sure all attribution requirements are followed.
Photos taken prior to 1955 are out of copyright and can be safely used, but you do need to be careful with anything more recent than this.
Generally, for more recent works, you should follow these guidelines for determining when copyright expires:
- 70 years after the death of the author/creator, when known.
- 70 years after creation or being made public, when the author/creator is not known.
- 50 years after creation or being made public for government works.
You will need to be able to justify that an image can be freely used.
Even when using a photo that you believe is out of copyright, you need to be careful, as, for example, uploading an image of a new newspaper article including an image from WW2 would not be allowed, as the article itself remains in copyright. If someone takes an out-of-copyright image and makes a substantial change to it, such as colourising a black and white photo, that new version can be newly copyrighted.
Don't forget, a source attribution of where you got an image from for each photo is also required.
The Attorney General's Department has a great resource available here with more information.
You can also find more information on how to make a submission on our Help pages at the link below.