What Bloggers Need to Know About Image Copyright
Blogging has ascended from a simple hobby that covers a single subject or topic to business covers and ecommerce fronts. Nowadays, blogs are used for a wide variety of things ranging from personal diaries, gathering places for storytelling or news sharing to brand advertisements and company marketing platforms. However, first time bloggers who decide to try themselves out in this trend often run into troublesome situations due to copyright laws and infringements.
A blog is not just a collection of simple text post and topics. It has evolved into much more sophisticated projects such as DIY or cooking guides, discussions, and sharing of impressions and experiences. Most of the times, a blog will be filled with visual content such as images, photos, videos etc., and if that content is used without the owner’s permission, legal action can be taken against the person using it. Here are a few things every blogger should know about copyrights.
Image Copyright
As a blogger, you would want your blog to be informative as well as visually appealing. Most of the time bloggers do not have the means nor the time to create their own images or photos, so instead they search through Google images or other sources for viable content to use for their blog. Using images found on the Internet can lead to legal disputes with the owners of the images as they are protected by the copyright law. The law states that anyone who creates content such as a photographer, designer or artist automatically owns the copyright to the content and using that content without its owner’s permission falls under copyright infringement.
Improving a blog’s esthetics with images and photos found on the Internet is not worth neither the risks nor the consequences it brings. Image copyright violations often occur in the world of guest blogging. While guest blogging can help with increasing search visibility, bloggers tend to forget that their content is next to worthless if they use visual elements without proper permissions. This practice can easily result in posts being removed, “cease and desist”, or the worst case scenario, lawsuits.
Fair Use
The gray area of copyright is in fact, fair use – it indicates that copyrighted images can be used even without an owner’s permission. However, fair use has its limitations and risks as well and should be approached with caution.
Certain situations in which copyright images can be used, is considered fair dealing. This means there is no need to get the owner’s permission or to acquire a license for the use of copyright image – this does not apply to stock images as the websites that sell them have specific rules and regulations. However, these images can only be used for reviews, reports, criticism, parody, education and teaching.
Furthermore, an image’s owner can still take legal action against the blogger, but it does not mean that an owner will win the case. The court will make the decision based on criteria such as the amount of content used and in which purpose. Staying on the right side of law in fair use will probably mean winning the case but lawsuits can be time consuming and expensive – therefore, avoiding such situations would be a good idea.
What Can You Do?
Using images, photos, and videos for your blog does not necessarily mean you will end up in court. There are always means to avoid all the trouble if you know what to do. There are plenty of ways you can run a blog without having to worry about contravention or having to track down owners of each image you want to use and ask for permission.
When it comes to images, a blogger can simply buy a few stock photos from a website that sells them or ask permission from the owner and acquire the license to use them on their blogs on purchase. This is the safest way to use copyright images but also an expensive one. Furthermore, there are artists who give out creative common licenses, meaning that anyone can use their content for free as long as they mention or praise the creator. Public domain pictures such as historic photos are also available for free, since their creators are long dead and cannot really complain about copyright infringement. If you have an agreement with a certain brand, you are free to use their brand logos in the purpose of marketing and advertising.
Videos, on the other hand, are much more flexible as the video hosting websites such as YouTube provide embedded codes for videos. Simply put, you are just embedding the video on your blog linking it back to its place of origin and not uploading it yourself, thus you don’t have to worry about copyright violation.
Stay Safe
Blogging is an ever growing trend nowadays and many people are starting a blog for various reasons. If you are careful enough you can avoid all the issues that come with copyright laws and infringements. Your blog should have awesome visual content in order to make it more exciting. However, going through a lawsuit or having to pay a hefty fine is just not worth it. That is why, it is important to carefully pick your blog’s visual content.
