terms of Media Use

Summary

This page discusses the many types of copyright and open-source media licenses that are displayed on this website. The summary is that your use of media from this site must follow the details of its license type. The explanations below are not legal advice. For an explanation of allowable uses and restrictions, please consult authoritative sources on the subject of each license.

Unless otherwise noted, all site content is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0 License issued by EaglesExplored.com, 2025. This includes content that is unmarked with any copyright or open-source license. You may use original content from EaglesExplored.com without further permission as long as your use is non-commercial and you provide attribution (credit) to EaglesExplored.com. Though not required, we’d love to hear about your reuse; sharing is a major goal of our existence.

Portions of this site were constructed to make externally-obtained media available for public use and sharing under the various end-user licenses controlled by the original authors. In order to do that, we combed through more than 100,000 publicly posted images and other resources to bring you the highest quality and most reliable content possible. We have endeavored to check the public use rights at its external source, and to include those rights as a part of our use and postings.

Use Rights & Limitations
Many items on this site are sharable with specific restrictions. To be clear, not all are open-source; some are copyrighted. Each piece of media collected from external sources is labeled with its applicable license or copyright. You are responsible for following those terms.

Media With Multiple Sources
Some externally-obtained media shown on this site might be available from multiple sources. We only show the use rights disclosed by the source where we obtained the media. Other sources might have terms that are more or less restrictive; our use is intended to be compliant only with the source where we obtained our media.

Mismarked Media: Attribution Clarifications
While we strive to label all media accurately, occasional errors may occur in identifying the correct copyright status, Creative Commons licenses, Public Domain works, or special use permissions—especially when working with legacy files, third-party submissions, “free stock” sites, or ambiguous metadata. If you notice any media with missing, incorrect, or unclear attribution, please contact us so we can investigate and update the labeling. Our intention is to honor each creator’s intent, abide by licensing terms, and promote a culture of proper credit and ethical reuse. We proactively annotate images with revised labels when known. In cases where attribution remains uncertain, we err on the side of caution and refrain from asserting copyright claims or CC status unless verified. This page is part of our commitment to open-access resources grounded in responsible curation, collaboration, and transparency.

Copyrighted works on this site are explicitly marked as such. Copyright is a form of legal protection for original creative works, giving the author exclusive rights to control how their work is used. This means they can decide if, when, and how their work is copied, distributed, or adapted. For users of this site, any work marked copyright cannot be used in any manner without the express written consent of the author. EaglesExplored.com is not liable for user reuse or misuse of any copyrighted media posted on this site. That said, copyright isn’t absolute. There are exceptions, the most prominent being fair use, which allows for limited use of copyrighted material for purposes like education, criticism, or news reporting. Any copyrighted work displayed on this site is either used by permission (so marked) or is used under the fair use clause for education, criticism and/or news reporting. User reuse of copyrighted material on this site is not covered under the use ascribed by EaglesExplored.com

The public domain refers to creative works that are not protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights, meaning anyone can use, adapt, and distribute them without permission or payment. This can happen when copyright has expired, been forfeited, or is otherwise inapplicable. Please make sure any work is clearly marked public domain prior to usage in that manner.

Most content on the site has a Creative Commons License, which is abbreviated as “CC” and has letters and/or numbers following it. This is an open-source, sharing license with terms varying upon the exact license issued by the resource author. A summary table of Creative Commons Licenses is posted below, however, you are instructed to view the full terms of each license, including updates from that shown, at https://creativecommons.org/ prior to your use of any media posted on this site. EaglesExplored.com is not liable for user reuse of any media posted on this site.

The following table is a summary of Creative Commons licenses from Wikipedia.