Using fresh and exciting pictures from the net makes your web pages, blogs, and articles more attractive and appealing. However, you need to do it right, or you could be in big trouble. Intellectual property is a hot issue and Lawyers are having a field day taking web developers and content writers to court for not properly getting permission or crediting the material they copy and then use on web pages and their content.
This short but very useful article will help you answer the frequently asked question. How do attributed image and avoid legal action taken against you when you publish an image that you did not create.
All content or any media such as in, videos, voice records, and more have their rights reserved unless the creator explicitly mentions that they do not.
So, when we are looking online for an image for website, blog or media of any kind, we should take into consideration the licensing needed to use it.
There are a few ways of getting images for your personal or commercial use. For each way, there is a legal way of attributing it.
Buy an image from a big stock company online
The cost is between $1 and $10 per standard sized image; the price goes up for the larger images. When you pay that, you are getting the regular license along with it; you can use the picture for most personal and commercial purposes such as websites, blogs, and different media types. Sometimes a license is limited, and there are some things that you need to get an extended license for such as items and templates for resale. Once you have done this, you have a license that lets you use the image without the need to give credit to anyone.
Creative Commons (CC) license
CC is a nonprofit organization that helps creators share their art without giving up their rights testing one. In this way, it is possible for the community to share this. However, it does have some minor restrictions.
You can easily find images that are under CC license all over the web, and if you wish to use a picture with a CC license, you don’t need to ask anyone’s approval to use it. However, you should be aware of the proper way to credit them.
CC introduced different types of license with three distinct ways to credit them; it depends on whether you changed it or not, if you did, how fate was to change.
It is possible to credit an image a few different ways. However, there are a few rules, which are vital to keeping in mind. Below you will see a table that makes this much easier to understand.
Name | Link | |
Creator | yes | yes |
Image | yes | |
License | yes |
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Example for crediting original image:
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
This can be also ok but not perfect:
photo by tvol/ CC BY 2.0
Example for crediting image that you slightly modified:
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol, used under CC BY / Desaturated from original
Example for image from which you created a derivative work:
This work, “90fied”, is a derivative of “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol, used under CC BY. “90fied” is licensed under CC BY by [Your name here].
An image without a license
When you find an image online that you would like to use for your needs, you should look for its creator and talk to him/her directly. You should ask for permission to use it; the owner will sometimes demand money or different kind of payment/crediting. Whatever your agreement was, you must have some form of documentation that says the creator gave information to use their work. They should include the image itself, the terms of use, limit patients limitations, and the payment scheme.
For example, a creator gave you permission by email, to use their image (with the picture attached) for your blog only. Backspace, without changing it in any manner or adding to it. You need to include the images name, a link to the creators Facebook or website and an “All Rights Reserved” symbol.
Where should the credit information be located?
The three most preferred ways are on the image itself, right below it, or above it.
If for some reason this is not possible, you can locate it in a different place as long as you have clearly marked which image it is crediting.
At our website, we credit the featured image of each article at the end of the article; we had a line “featured image credit” to it so the readers can understand that this credit belongs to the featured image.
Final thoughts
The article you just read is not a substitute for legal advice, and you should always check with a legal professional if you have any questions about the legality of using any media material you find on the Internet before using it in your blogs, articles, and social media.