Dear PropellerHeads: I am an amateur web page builder. I take care of websites for my family, my church, and a friend's hobby club. Occasionally, I find neat graphics looking around on the web. Is it OK to copy them to my sites? Do I have to pay for them? Are they going to catch me?

A: No. Yes. No. Next question.

OK, seriously. Most of those graphics belong to someone else, so copying is not OK. But, you still may have some wiggle room.

When you say web graphics, I am going to include illustrations, icons, logos, photos, and other artwork. These are browser-friendly files that have extensions like .jpg, .gif, .png and .bmp. Review www.quackit.com/web_graphics for a quick tutorial on the subject.

Today's browsers allow you to hover over pretty much any graphic content, right-click, and save it directly to your computer. Then, it's just a short trip to your website, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter...page. You can also "clip" the image directly from a web page with utilities like Microsoft's snipping tool.

The graphics you like so much were created by drawing, scanning, photographing, and computer manipulation. The folks who made these contributions to the World Wide Web were most likely practicing their profession. There's the rub.

Computer graphics is a big business. Companies employ graphic artists to design, develop, and refine graphics using programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, and many others. Many consider these exciting, high-impact graphics a source of appeal for their sites and would consider copying them stealing. There are many companies that are in the business of building graphics and they sell the right to use them to site developers. Again, they would frown upon uncontrolled (i.e., uncompensated) distribution.

Some companies have gone to great lengths to protect their intellectual property, including breaking the images into pieces making it difficult to copy or scale. Some are putting invisible electronic signatures (watermarks) in them so they can trace their usage easily. Gotcha!

I think making the assumption that someone got paid to build the graphic and would not want their work stolen is the safest. If you see a copyright notice on the file or its caption, you should definitely not plan to "lift it."

If you see the perfect graphic and want it for your site, I would recommend your drop them an e-mail and ask permission.

On the other hand, in some cases I suspect there may not be much harm. These folks are probably most interested in commercial usage. That is, if you are not making any money on their graphics' usage, they may not care. I would recommend creating a hyperlink back to the source (their website) as an acknowledgement of its usage and source. I am not giving you permission, merely stating what might be acceptable for casual usage.

Alternatively, there are literally thousands of free graphics for the taking. You might want to check out free-graphics.com or internetclipart.com (bit.ly/TxRmHr).

Lastly, consider building your own. With the help of some pretty nifty free programs like Gimp, Paint.Net, and PhoXo (bit.ly/XQV5AZ), you could be drawing animated GIFs or touching up your family pics in no time. But...don't be surprised if you see something you created on someone else's website.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. Email them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.