Finding free images online that you can share, use and modify without infringing the rights of copyright holders can often be difficult.

But Google have now taken steps to make identifying licensed images on its Image Search a little easier. By allowing you to restrict searches to only images that have been tagged with licence information, like an Attribution Share Alike licence, Google have made illegal use of images less likely to be accidental.

Google will be able to identify licensing information for work published under Creative Commons, GNU Free and public domain licences. Hopefully this signals a step in the right direction towards more effective protection of user rights online.