You can get sued for using the wrong pictures.
It happened to a popular author/blogger. Never Google an image and post it on your blog. It could cost you a lot of money and time in court. Seriously.
So how do you get pictures that are safe?
I mostly use this free stock photo website. But there are a few other sources for pictures that are what's called "creative commons" meaning pictures that anyone can use.
1. Clipart in Word
2. Wikipedia Commons
3. Flicker Commons
4. Wana commons
With any other picture you have to verify the copyright with owner of the picture. Better safe than sorry!
13 comments:
The photos I post are either my own or ones like movie posters. I'm sure those guys don't mind the free advertising.
I remember a little over a year ago, when I first started my current blog, there was a case flying around on blog posts about a woman who was going through a bothersome and expensive settlement over using a photo she pulled from the internet. Fortunately, she was kind enough to share her story and caution with other bloggers. I immediately took off any pictures I had borrowed and now, almost exclusively, use my own photos or those I can find on microsoft clipart (and always credit that source if I do).
This same thing crops up with Pinterest from time to time-- it's a veritable glut of ripping pictures off the internet. It's been my main hesitancy of jumping on that bandwagon until a clear call is made about it.
My husband has a shutterstock account that I infiltrate quite often. :)
Like Julie, I haven't joined pinterest because of the legal connotations. I'm a scaredy cat when it comes to copyrighted stuff.
The Library of Congress site is handy for things like this. And while I Google-surf for images, I also e-mail the artists for permission. Most recently I got a digital proof of a monolophosaurus painting out of the deal. Most are very friendly!
John at The Bathroom Monologues
Yikes, I better fix that. What should I do with older pics on previous posts? Do I need to remove those too?
Now I use my own pictures and stuff from free sites. At my old Angelfire site, I found pictures on all sorts of sites, or took pictures in books and then cropped the pictures to use them on my site, or for Find a Grave memorials I created.
I scrubbed my blog of copyrighted images last year. Can't afford a law suit, ever.
This is a good topic. I use Flicker commons most of the time but no matter where I get my picture, I make sure it's okay as long as I attribute it to the photographer. I have a blogger friend that was getting sued for using pictures and it was a big and frustrating ordeal. Better to be safe than sorry, I agree!
I generally only use photos I've taken. Which makes my blog low on pictures but I don't want any problems.
Yeah, it's definitely something to be careful of. It's easy to think that if a picture is online, there's no reason not to use it. Easy and quite wrong.
Good reason to combine photography and writing love ^_~
Really important subject, thanks for sharing - will check out all my old blogposts and make sure they're up to scratch!
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