Copyright Confusion Continues
Anne-Marie emailed me to tell me about a discussion going on about copyright protection for photos and content. What is the legal position around using other peoples images? Are you OK if you provide attribution? Or is that only CC licensed?
If you look in the comments you will see there is some excellent discussion, I am not sure I can add anything other than what I do.
In preference and safety order
- Create a new photograph myself
- Get permission from the copyright holder and take a thumbnail copy pointing to the copyright holders full sized image, with attribution
- Use a CC licensed image from Flickr and stick within the rules and rights
- Buy a small stock image that does the same job
- Use the thumbnail without permission but still link and attribute the copyright holder
The reality of the web is you can not always get permission in time and while flickr and stock photo sites have large collections there is not always the exact image you need or in the case of stock, the budget to buy it. I would always much rather take a photograph myself but without a lot of time and money the props, equipment and locations aren’t always available.
Inevitably most of us are going to do #5 at least once fully expecting a take-down notice. You might be surprised though when I have used this approach most people have thanked me for the link and traffic. I expect people would be upset if I took the full res image or didn’t attribute of course.
It’s a minefield of ambiguity and I fully agree with this comment from Jonathan …
Most people I talk with could care less about whether they would win in court, but rather, about being sued in the first place. For all practical purposes, small Webmasters want to steer clear of gray areas and, for better or worse, this is one of them.
Making your blog posts illustrated and pretty is not worth a costly legal fight I am sure you will agree!
How do you go about adding images to your posts?
Tags: writing, photography, images, copyright, law, legal, tips
Posted on August 09th, 2007 by Chris Garrett in Writing
#1 on my list is the same as yours - create own. That is why I take a lot of random photos of things and scenes that I like and store them in Flickr.
Failing that, there are two sites that I use a lot:
http://everystockphoto.com
http://sxc.hu
The first is a CC photo search engine, while the second is a free stock image repository. A lot of nice images can be found, especially on sxc.hu.
And if I am really desperate - Google Images. Even then it’s a thumbnail and I always link back to the original site where I found it from. And yeah, I expect a take down notice for these but I haven’t got one yet.
I go the Flickr route, using photos licensed under Attribution 2.0. I think the images really make the visual look of the blog.
I’ve also included a ‘Photography Credits’ page just to double-up on the attribution. Partly because I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing, and also because I want to showcase these photographers.
I use istockphoto, a $1 for a web quality image you can’t go wrong!
I like istockphoto.com too, plus they have a decent affiliate program. Also, there’s some pretty good clip art out there from places like Microsoft Office. Even those clip art CDs from the office supply store are helpful. I also have a nice collection of clip art books with vintage artwork from the 30s, 40s and 50s that I scan. For my cooking blog, I try to take my own photos. But for product reviews, I do grab pictures from the manufacturer or Amazon.com’s affiliate program, which I believe is o.k.
Other than using my own originals, I predominantly use Morguefile.com, which is a user generated repository of stock photography, intended for public domain use.
I create a “lightbox” on Morguefile and save an image there each time I use it — that way, I need only link out once from my blog to the source of the images, ultimately leading directly to the contributing photographer’s work.
Wherever I can, I use my own. But I manage a large group of blogs and can’t always find just the right image. In those cases, I will go to Flickr’s creative commons search and look for an image that I can use with attribution and the link, which are always right below the image itself. If I can’t find what I need there, I head for iStockPhoto, which has never failed me.
I admit that, when I can’t create an appropriate image or photo myself, I tend to use images without permission. However, if I were ever to receive a takedown notice, I would fully comply.
Thankfully, most people who put their images online do so in good faith, and with the desire to share the image. As long as you give proper attribution, I’ve found that most people are happy to let you use their image, as long as you’re not hotlinking and stealing their bandwidth.
istockphoto rocks. When I looked at the time it took me to create good (or even not so good) illustrations and photos, paying a buck or 2 for great stuff by an ocean of talented people is well worth it.