When Internet marketers begin working on an ad campaign, there are a lot of things that they must consider: what will sell their product, how will they attract customers, and how will they actually pull an entire campaign together. In this maelstrom of planning, the thought of intellectual property laws can easily slip through the cracks.

Marketers can run into legal trouble in a number of different ways, most of which are in the realm of intellectual property violations. First of all, they can get into trouble by using a piece of media (video, music, image, etc.) in an advertisement without express permissions from the creator of the work. This can lead to lawsuits and huge money lost—plus you’ll probably lose your job!

The surefire way to make sure this doesn’t happen to you is to ensure that you use public domain or Creative Commons content. Content in the public domain is generally content that is old enough that it has no copyright license on it, and is therefore usable by anyone. There are also some creators that declare that their work will be in the public domain immediately after release. Creative Commons content works largely the same way.

You can visit the following sources to see a lot of places to find images, sounds, video, etc. that are completely free to use.

• Pixabay for high-quality creative commons images—but we sure to check the license just to be sure!
• Freesound is a good resource for soundbites and other audio clips.
• You can visit the Creative Commons website for access to free video content.

You can also join stock photo sites to have a reliable source of images that you can use, according to their rules. Shutterstock is the most popular option for these images.

Another legal issue that content marketers should be aware of is the requirement of getting release forms signed when shooting video content for a marketing campaign. There are privacy laws that you must notify people of in advance if you want to use their personal information for marketing purposes, as well as using their likeness in video content.

If you are sweating, don’t worry! As long as you are smart and careful about your marketing campaigns, you won’t have anything to worry about.

Click here to learn more about how intellectual property laws can impact Internet marketers and how you can avoid breaking any laws.