Legality of using royalty free graphics
 

I have to admit I am an icon hoarder!!!

I have approx 5000 royalty free icons.

Question: As long as I don't sell these icons or offer them as my own, should I be able to use the icons to incorporate into graphics I use to alter my styles? Personally I say yes. What is your opinion?

I did not keep track of where or when I downloaded the icons so I really can't give credit to the makers of such.

Bottom line .....

I want to start making status icon sets (free) using some of the icon collection. Is this something that would cause anyone to have heartburn over doing such a thing?

If you didn't make 'em, you cannot use 'em.

Well, "royalty free" means you can use them, per the terms of their acquisition. It's kinda the whole point. :)

Really, use of each image would depend on the specific license issued with each one. Sometimes there's a time limit, instance limit or other arbitrary specification. Because of this, if I download a royalty free image, I don't even bother with it unless all commercial/personal restrictions are lifted. Odds are they'll never even know what I do with a specific image, but I prefer to avoid any potential hassle down the road, and certainly don't want to keep track of each and every unique license. (Though if it's for personal private use, all bets are off.)

Oh, I guess I misread that. I thought it was a company name.

If that were true and it was enforced, The internet would be very small.

Digital Jedi pretty much nailed this. You have to know the specific type of license under which the content is made available. Most royalty-free content is provided as a way for the creator to gain paid work, meaning there is often some requirement of mentioning the creator or linking the creator's site. Work created after 1978 is copyrighted for the life of the creator plus 70 years. For hire or anonymous works are copyright protected for a period of 95 to 120 years. It would be in your best interest to comply with the licensing on each image or set.

The overall response I've gotten so far from the suppliers of some of the icons I have is, that's what they are for is to use. If someone inquires about where you got them, give them our link.

That's a good enough response for me.

Keep those responses, just in case.

Looking at more of these sites I've gotten icons from and noticed that some of these sites (actually most) accept icon submissions. They in turn offer them to the public as free downloads. I'm not going to lose any sleep worrying about using them.

--------------- Added [DATE]1360769144[/DATE] at [TIME]1360769144[/TIME] ---------------

Here is an example of some of the icons I re-sized and am using as status icons.

The link points to a style that started out as the, "Take Five" style from Web and Art Solutions. I've modded it to suit my taste.