The problem of legal protection of scientific, literary and artistic production is particularly acute at the present moment, in the era of rapid development of technologies that make it possible to reproduce and distribute any object with extraordinary ease. It is important to remember, however, that copyright, while protecting the interests of the owners of the products of creative human activities, allows for exceptions to the general rules. Notably, these include citing from legally published works for scientific, polemical, critical, informational, and educational purposes in order to reveal a creative intention with reference to the source and the author. Yet, the practical application of the rule on free citation often causes difficulties, since the Civil Code of the Russian Federation lacks both the definition of “citation” and the procedure for its correct execution.Free use without the author’s consent and payment of remuneration is allowed only with the simultaneous observance of a number of restrictions: the work should be used only for the purposes listed by the law with the obligatory indication of the author and the source of borrowing, besides, the use is possible only to the extent justified by the purpose of citing. Significant difficulties in this regard are caused by the posting of photos, for example, from social networks, Instagram, whose authors, as well as the conditions for the use of their works by the account’s owner, are often unknown. Determining the correct volume also causes certain difficulties. Legitimate citation is a common case of free use of copyright objects and includes various works that exist not only in the text format. With photographs and works of fine art, the situation is somewhat more complicated, as fragments of such works can be used both as quotations and illustrations.At the same time, correct and lawful approaches need to be specified both by the legislator and judicial practice.