It has come to my attention that the images I get from Google Images to accompany my postings belong to others. I don't know why I haven't made a habit of crediting them with a link back via their URL, but from today on, I shall.
My goal will be, if the photo ain't mine, it will have a URL to where I found it.
Mea Culpa!
7 comments:
I'm so glad you posted this!
A lot of people do this. It boggles my mind to be honest, but I have to remind myself that I've worked with copyright issues for over 20 years so I'm just more aware of property rights than other folks I guess.
This is exactly why I quit my photoblog a few months back. Nothing on that blog says "take these photos and pretend they're yours" but people sure did. LOL
As a lawyer, I'm well aware of copyright issues too...and I'd never put someone else's words out there without attribution.
I struggle with this issue with photos. While I don't want photos of my kids going anywhere, that's a privacy issue, not a copyright issue. I don't really care if people borrow my photos, so it didn't really occur to me that it would be an issue UNLESS it was from a website that said "DO NOT USE MY PHOTOS"...
The internet is kind of like the wild-west in terms of free use and borrowing photos. At least nobody ends up in Boot Hill!
I'm still not even real sure exactly how all of that works so every photo on my blog was taken by me.. and I usually don't put family pix up. I have but only a couple of times.
It's always wise whenever you use someone else's work whether it's on the internet or anywhere else, to give credit to the creator.
Flash 55 - Earthquake
One Single Impression - Running
I thought about photos a lot like you explained to Susan. Then so many people started getting up in arms about it that I don't use someone else's photo without crediting them, and I went back to my first year of blogging and took down a lot of posts that had uncredited photos I couldn't trace.
I always copy the URL into the picture so that it goes back to where I pinched it from. Even the birthday greetings etc I do that with. The more I started reading about this the more I thought I better do that so I don't take the credit.
I so agree with you on the pictures. I don't care if anyone uses my photos anywhere. Just give the credit back to me some how, hence my watermarking on all my photos. Which yes can be cropped.
In the day of the internet this is an issue that will never go away. So hence I always refer it back. Until I get threatened with a lawsuit because I wasn't suppose to use it at all. Oh well. Such is life I suppose! At least I know a good attorney LOL :)
I'm still struggling with this -- whether I should take a bunch of blogs down even like Quilly did.
I agree with Nessa, that one should give credit to the creator, but rarely do I even know whether the photo was original to the site where I find it! Thus, the URL so someone can investigate.
If it has a watermark on it, I just don't use it because CLEARLY in that case someone has said "this is mine."
And I don't even care whether someone gives me credit for a photo they copy from my blog. I figure I put them out there to share, so what else would I expect? If I were a professional photographer (or even a good photographer), I might have a different take, but then I'd make the effort to block people from being able to copy it. If they can do that with clip art, they can do it with photos.
Oh well, at the minimum, I'll do the URL. I'll have to think about this some more.
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