Can I use world war I image as my game background

Hello, I am new to unity and I am developing a game. I found a world war I related image where some soldiers are walking. I put that as the background of the game with alpha set to 0.1. Is it wrong to put that image in the game? I mean is there any chance that my game can be blocked?

 

You can find images under creative commons that you could use for free here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_War_I#Fronts_and_Battles

 

It's more complicated than that. You may not have the rights to use the image in any capacity depending on some of the circumstances around it.

 

That image is open source.

 

I actually found it from there at first.

 

Last I was aware the concept of open source didn't exist back when those images were taken. A quick search for WW1 images copyrights came up with the following reddit thread which made some good points (eg automatic copyrights extend to older works, some people will modify them and try to copyright the modification, etc).

https://www.reddit.com/r/COPYRIGHT/comments/51rxdl/copyright_claims_on_ww1_images/

 

It should be good then. What you can do is contacting commons wikimedia and ask them what you can do with the image.

 

Thanks for that.

 

Legally yes. Morally no.

Too soon.

 

Its been 100 years since the war. Which means that some (but not all or even most) of the photos have moved into public domain. This happens automatically 70 years after the death of the photographer.

The other issue will be around the sensitivity and proper treatment of war images. Many countries still have their cultural identity tied up in WW1. Which means they can get picky about how its portrayed. Depending on the exact nature of the game, you can expect people to get upset by the use of actual photos.

 

Take it into photoshop and move some stuff around at least so that people won't easily recognize it.

 

People are not stupid.
With current existing tools, if someone will spot similarity to copy righted materials and be willing to take extra steps for comparison, it can become very pain in back side.

Is not uncommon to purposely leaking copyrighted materials, to later hunt those, who are using them without permission.