Here is a cautionary tale for all of us. So long posts with galleries of photos of beautiful things gone by. Sorry this is a reblog of a reblog, but the information is important.
I don’t normally “reblog” stuff. I like to write my own material… and usually my opinions differ from the orignal writer’s, so I need to write my own stuff anyway.
However, in this case, I think this post is powerful enough, and well-written enough that it can stand on its own. If you blog, and you have ever posted a picture on your blog that you did not take with your own camera, you OWE IT TO YOURSELF to read this post. Are you sitting on a ticking time bomb?
Many people think “It will not happen to me.” Guess what? It happened to author Roni Loren. Please click the link below to hop over to read her story.
Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Pics on Your Blog – My Story
By the way… in case you were wondering… all the art on my blog has been legally purchased. …
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Robin Coyle 
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I saw this on JUennifers blog, shocking and worrying 😦
xx
It cured me of nipping photos off the Internet!
Thanks Robin
You bet!
Thank you for this Robin – while most are my own, I have cribbed a couple of photos from Flickr. I was conscious of copy right restrictions but feel I need to back and re-check them … Great re-blog.
I am taking all of my non-Robin-taken photos off and will use the sites were restriction-free images. Can’t be too careful!
This reminds me of my time as a Webmaster for a local government site. One of our users was sending me images to be included on her pages and they were obvioulsy nicked from somewhere. When i called her up she said she’d found a wonderful image library – Google Images ! Like you, she was under the impression that if it’s on the web, it’s copyright free. Wrong. Very wrong.
There is a simple solution – Flickr. You can search for images using Advanced Search that are licenced under Creative Commons. There are more than enough of them for most people and you are fine with the copyright.
From now on, all images on my blog will be mine, or from Flickr or Creative Commons.
Makes me sad tho, that we need to be so cautious. It would be one thing if I was making money from the image. Goodness knows I not!
Yes, I saw that on Jennifer’s site, I think I’m generally pretty aware, I use mostly my own photos, or free ones from stock photo sites which specify that you’re allowed to use them as long as you are not making money out of them. As has been said, I was surprised that they still sued even when she took the photos straight down, that’s harsh, and a definite warning to us all.
I need to clean up my blog. A task that I am not looking forward to. Something like cleaning the garage.
Yes, very helpful, Robin, thank you. I am very careful to take and post all of my own photos. I don’t want to have to worry about whether the images are mine. (But I love all of your writing-related photos… would be sad to see them go away.)
I’m sad about it too. Aside from the galleries of beautiful libraries, etc., I think the cute little post-related images add to the content. Rats.
There are good images available for free or at a cost as the post shows. But we can’t go wrong with using our own photos—as long as there are no restrictions on our subject matter! Certain museum exhibits, for example, forbid photography. Posting a photo like that would also be a mistake.
Yeah, but there are such cool photos out there! I’m sad I can’t use them anymore. Oh well. It means I need to amp up the content and be more creative with using photos of my own or those from free site.
I read an article that was written by a blogging, pinning lawyer about the pinterest problem. So now, I’m glad that I’ve procrastinated enough that I still don’t have a pinterest account. 😉 And I’ll stick to my own photos for my blog.
Thanks for sharing, Robin–this really is important stuff.
I’ve wondered about Pinterest and copyright infringement. We live in such a litigious society, one is afraid to sneeze in public for fear of a lawsuit about spreading disease.
My posts will be boring now without fun photos. Darn.
I’m glad you did your inkwells and feather pens before you read that post!
You should see the beautiful collection of sealing wax post I put together. I was ready to post it today until I read the dire warnings of doing such and evil thing.
Come over and I’ll show it to you.
You don’t have to ask ME twice…plus, it’s happy hour. 😉
I’m mixing you a lovely cocktail as I type. Oops. slopped some on the keyboard.
You can sued for that.
This was a good piece. Some of my earlier posts have uncredited images, but I don’t remember where I got them. I’m more careful now, though I should probably shift to using one of the image sites recommended in that article. Still, I think being sued would be rare, as long as one took the image down. Most of it comes from naivete on the blogger’s part, and to sue someone, even after they’ve taken it down, seems a bit malicious. It’s the Internet, after all. One needs to recognize how fluid everything can be. And it seems to me, as long as credit is given, it only benefits the person whose image is used. I have a Creative Commons license on my site. You might want to click on it for more information. You can set it up how you want. I am okay with people using something from my site as long as they credit me.
I was under the impression that if the image was on the Internet and it didn’t have a copyright symbol on it, I/we were free to use it because it is in the public domain. Boy was I wrong.
I will take a look at the Collective Commons link on your blog. Thanks Carrie.
Yes, I retweeted this from Loni’s site yesterday. Definitely words of wisdom to all of us. I have copyright warnings all over my blog and have mentioned, in the cases I did receive permission from the artist/photographer, that I have received express permission. I, of course, keep every piece of correspondence allowing me to use pictures on my blog. We just have to cover our rear ends every which way to Sunday in the event you get some individual who wants to pursue a law suit despite your cooperation to set the record right.
I missed your reblog. Sorry about that?
I don’t have any copyright stuff on my blog. How did you go about getting it?
It’s rather time consuming. When I find a picture I like, I try to find the original website. When I do, I check under their terms and conditions. Usually it will tell you whether the pictures are copyrighted or not, or if you can use them. I have come across some that I loved and I contacted the artist directly through their website, introduced myself and told them what I wanted to use the picture for. Sometimes they say yes, most of the time they say no, so I don’t use. I also use a lot of free downloads from 123rf.com. Some places like Veer also have free images that they give you when you sign up with them. There are other sites like Shutterstock that you can buy pics from. I also found Flikr is a great place for pics. You can search for pictures that you can use with common licenses and each picture tells you how you can use the pics. Again, if you find a picture you like and contact the photographer and ask to use the pic (I did this with a recent picture that shows a legitimate slush pile). I got an e-mail back very, very fast from the photographer who said ‘sure, use it.’ Photobucket also allows you to use any of their photos. It’s clearly on their site that anyone can download, alter, etc. any photo on the site. I am very cautious about doing so, though, because I’ve seen lots of copyrighted pictures on the site. When in doubt, I contact the person who posted the picture. I also list that person’s information on my site or with a click on the pictures.
Thanks for the great info here. How good of you to be diligent in contacting the owner of the image for permission.
The whole lawsuit thing has me willy-nilly.