Is Your Website a Ticking Time Bomb?
The expensive danger of right-clicking and using a copywritten image... plus a list of free image resources.
It’s easy to see how it happens. Your organization or company has a website or blog that uses images on a regular basis to illustrate articles and posts. At some point, a new employee, an intern, or even a seasoned (but uninformed) veteran staff member looks for a photo or illustration using Google Images, right-clicks that picture, and uses it on a post. The post could be there for months or even years, but you eventually receive a threatening letter from a lawyer representing the photographer or artist who created that long-forgotten image. Suddenly, you’re on the wrong side of a copyright dispute.
Running afoul of copyright rules can cost you thousands of dollars, and technology has made it easier for the copyright holders to track down those who use images without permission. Photographers and artists should absolutely be compensated for their work, and there are plenty of stock image websites that provide access to millions of images for a reasonable price. But the same technology that protects copyright owners has led to another type of abuse—unscrupulous artists and photographers have teamed up with lawyers to take advantage of unsuspecting website owners.
I’ve had clients hit with letters from lawyers and websites of my own threated with infringement suits. From my own experience, I’ve seen two different situations:
- A legitimate stock image company or photo bureau notifies you of an unauthorized image use on a website. (For the record, I’ve never seen this happen for an “royalty free” image; instead this occurs more regularly with more expensive and exclusive “rights managed” images.) Getty Images, for instance, has a full department solely focused on finding offending images online. They will review the history of your site using Archive.org to determine how long you’ve been using the image and then bill you for your past use. For some of their more exclusive images, that invoice can be thousands of dollars.
- An independent photographer posts many images online and implies they are free to use, but in small print, the photographer will ask that all images be attributed to him or her. That artist then works with a lawyer to scour the web for occurrences of their image where the attribution is missing. They then claim the offender owns some outrageous fee for the use of the image (I’ve seen examples of claims as high as $40,000).
In both scenarios ignorance is not a defense, and in both cases, you will likely need to pay something. In the situations I’ve dealt with, I was able to negotiate for the client and settle at a lower rate, but the mistake still cost thousands of dollars, along with wasted time and stress. At least when dealing with attorneys for a legitimate stock photo, you can see the documented prices of the image. When working with independent photographers who try to “catch” content managers in honest errors, it's ridiculous that someone can simply put a price tag on his or her work that has no basis in market prices, but they can.
Here are few rules to help you avoid an unexpected invoice or legal threat.
- Train employees, interns, or anyone with the ability to post on your websites about the importance of using legal images. And regularly repeat the training, especially if you have a team of many junior employees who are managing your social media content.
- Don’t use Google Image search as a vehicle to find content and visuals for your website. Use free sources of images (see reference list at the end of this article), or paid subscription stock photography sites like iStockphoto.com or Shutterstock.com. Don’t forget that you can always use your own camera or phone to snap an appropriate shot.
- Just because an image doesn’t have a copyright symbol next to it or a rights statement, don’t assume it’s free to use. Artist’s work is automatically covered by copyright law regardless of whether it’s registered or has an accompanying “c” logo. You need to see specific “creative commons” language associated with the image or source website before you should feel comfortable using an image, or (when using historical images) you see language like: “no known restrictions on publication.” Also, remember that even some creative commons licenses may require attribution or have limitations on commercial use. Read the license carefully.
- Regularly review your website content to make sure there are no offending images. This “ounce of prevention” can save a lot of headaches down the road.
Disclaimer: I'm not a copyright lawyer and this article only covers the basics regarding usage violation and there are many other issues that can arise regarding copyright and use of images and likenesses. Please consult your own legal team for detailed issues.
Free Image Resources:
Library of Congress Collections: Copyright protection for many historical images has run out, the Library of Congress offers many digitized images that have no restrictions. https://www.loc.gov/collections/
The White House Photo Stream: In general, images produced by government photographers are in the public domain. The current White House offers photos on their Flickr stream as “Creative Commons Attribution,” meaning they are free to use as long as you attribute them to the photographer. https://www.flickr.com/people/whitehouse/
Embeddable Getty News, Celebrity and Sports Images: Getty images offers thousands of images from their editorial collection to website owners but you must embed them using the Getty format. https://www.gettyimages.com/resources/embed
Pexels: Free Stock Photo site. https://www.pexels.com/
Pixabay: Free Stock Photo site. https://pixabay.com/
Stock Snap: Free Stock Photo site. https://stocksnap.io/
UnSplash: Free Stock Photo site. https://unsplash.com
Wikimedia Commons: Wikimedia carries many public domain images. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Old Book Illustrations: This site carries cool public domain illustrations from old books and publications. https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/
The British Library: Another site that carries public domain illustrations from old books and publications. https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary
NASA Collection: Thousands of amazing shots from the space agency are public domain. https://images.nasa.gov/
Jamey Bowers is a Senior Vice President at Berman and Company, a communications and public affairs firm in Washington, DC. ?
Marketing & Sales Consultant @ Your Health Magazine
7 年Definitely sharing this, good stuff!
Vice President of Communications at Institute for Justice
7 年This is a good run down. I'm going to share it with my staff. A non-profit I volunteered for received a notice in the mail from Getty demanding something like $18,000 (double its budget). They didn't tell us what image infringed. I did some sleuthing, and realized that it was our *own* image they were trying to charge us for. The photographer had sold the rights off, but said we could keep them for our own use. Thankfully she was willing to call of the dogs. The one thing that I'd add is that you cannot always trust websites that say an image is Creative Commons licensed. I've seen more than a few websites assert an image is CC licensed, but after tracking down the original source, realized it was a rights-managed image that others asserts was CC licensed.
COO at American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)
7 年Appreciate the guidance and resources. Good stuff!
Photography and Cinematography Specialist
7 年Good info, Jamey.