I am going to ask you a question that depending on the answer may save you quite a bit of money and a few sleepless nights!
Q. How many of you have images on your website, facebook pages or blogs that you have NOT purchased, merely ‘borrowed’ from another site or even Google images?
Those of you who know me, will know also that I am a very grounded person and not given to flights of fancy, so you can be sure that I am not being overly excitable when I tell you to take them down from your site IMMEDIATELY!
Why would I say that? Copyright law - that is why...
So far in the last 2 months I have heard from 3 people who have had very strong letters from Getty Images which have cost them rather a lot of money; this is because they not only hadn’t realised that they didn’t own the image (it was bought but licensed to the wrong person), or they thought it was OK to use because it had been changed and placed on Facebook and Pinterest with a lovely quote – it looked like it was OK – how could you be breaking the law by using something in the public domain afterall?
And it may have been OK if it was your personal site, but if you have a Facebook business page, or it sits on your company website, or you use it to illustrate a blog, then it would be deemed as being there in order to help you make money; it has changed it’s purpose.
If I have you scurrying off to your websites, blogs and facebook pages to remove pictures it is important that you also remove them from your uploaded gallery, as these pictures have special code embedded in them that a massive computer somewhere in the world spends all day tracking.
There are a lot of very good stock photographs around which do not cost a great deal and I have listed a few sites that I use regularly.
I am sure that others of you could add even more…
If you have found this Tip useful, please pass it on to others – you may be helping them more than you realise!
