Hi @davidallenjones, thank you. Copyright is a heated discussion, and a gray area for a lot of people who do not know or understand what copyright is. If you have any suggestions on adding links where only work is published that can be used for commercial purposes we are happy to add those links to our blogpost.
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@xposed thanks for this post and to bring up the topic. This entire area is one that is hotly debated as you say and will continue to be for quite some time. In terms of sites, I am sure you are aware of places like Pixbay and Pexels where you can get photos with CC0 licenses. There are several other good ones like PxHere too. The reasons that photos and video sites like these are available is because the advent on low cost high quality cameras and so many sites selling them to traditional places that it wrecked the photography industry. When you add in that people are also using GiFs and memes from content with no credit paid, you can see that things are in a bad way for those who take pictures.
So most photogs have thrown in the towel and are looking to see if the new model of volume or giving away pictures as marketing for their services, or setting up on sites like Patreon actually pans out. I can tell you it has for only a very few photographers and most of the great ones I know struggle.
Longer form content is a more complicated issue. As you probably know newspaper and other periodical companies are under real pressure to make money but they are scrutinized. Today, they are under onslaught by regulators demanding high quality content and accountability. They need to be both profitable and responsible. So if they create content and set up licenses and that content ends up on sites that are focusing on terrorism, racism or other bad things, it can come back to haunt them. Also they do not have a revenue model for all of this. The tech has been way ahead of the laws and no one has wanted to slow things down for fear of stopping the tech money trains, so it is a mess right now.
On top of this, you have cheap online sites providing low quality content much of which is merely the traditional publishers content either rewritten or simply copied.
So finding good content that is not copyrighted and valued is really difficult. there are a few sites like http://www.copyrightfreecontent.com/ and there is this site that has links to public domain online resources http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to-finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/ but there is not a whole lot. Smart publishers are simply wating for laws to be rewritten to cover them for what is happening now. Many believe that the big guys like Facebook and Google will have to pay billions retroactively to content owners (Steemit would also be on the hook). Where and how this will end is anyone's guess but the direction is toward more regulation and more policing not less.
So you are left with two choices. 1. Take other people's content and hope that it does not come down on individuals. ( I personally think that there is a good possibility that this is the case).
Just my thoughts. and one more on a personal side. I am a firm believer in protecting creator rights. It takes time, sweat and resources to create content. Guys like Mark Zuckerburg have exploited the content of others (yes posts on Facebook is content too) to become one of the richest people in the world While many of the musicians, writer and other creative people cannot make any money. Same with Google's Youtube in many cases. Creators make these platforms run. So they should be paid.
I am in a fight right now with Spotify for the same reasons. They are about to go public at a $26B USD valuation meanwhile their writers and small publishers make very little. This is not sour grapes nor is it not recognizing changes in business models. I get and understand that times have changed, but if people still love the product (they do), then why are the people that create it getting paid any more and those who market or co-opt it making so much money. Without our creative people life becomes less interesting so we need to protect them. With this said, some common sense changes have to be made and I am hopeful with things like blockchain we can both create new models and break the content monopolies that are very outdated. Let's all stay focused on these issues. A place like Steemit has to because its future depends on it. Hopefully I answered your questions and thanks.
Understanding the way how Copyright works at this very moment by law is one thing. Denying it, is another. Learn, adapt and move on.