Copyright images: keep it legal!

The thorny question of copyright for photographs on the internet has been around for a long time – and it’s not going away. It’s all too easy to pick up a picture from a website. Try it: right click with your mouse and “Save Image As”. You now have a copy of an image which has probably been supplied in good faith by a struggling photographer, someone who expects and deserves some return for their work. What can they do about it?

If you picked up a printed picture in a shop and walked off with it, I think we all agree that would be wrong. But the commercial realities of the online space have been blurred, and we expect a lot for free. This is why photographers are so sensitive to privacy and copyright on sharing sites like Flickr – and why the latest move by Getty Images is attracting some real debate.

Getty are well known for their strong stand against copyright infringement. This article in the Guardian last year pretty much sums up the zeal with which they pursued people who were careless about image sourcing for commercial use (such as on a website) – even if they had no idea what they had done.

Realising that this is a tide they can’t turn back, Getty have just released 35 million images free to use. Some photographers are up in arms – but Getty are not playing free and easy with intellectual property here. Sure, you can embed an image for free on your site without paying a license fee, but the restrictions on use are tighter than anything we’ve seen before. They have also created a strong argument against people who continue to infringe copyright – the high cost of licenses through Getty is no longer an excuse, if you can embed for free.

When this blog was originally published on 12th March we were able to say :
“This startled ostrich is an embedded Getty image. You’ll see a few interesting features. It isn’t actually part of my website – it links straight back to the Getty site. The photographer is credited very clearly. Getty still have full control over the image, so I’m aware they could pull it from their library any time and leave a blank space right here.

Less than three weeks later, that image has been pulled from the library. As it’s no longer available, I have, as predicted, a blank space.

5 tips for staying on the right side of the law

• Use your own high quality images on your website – the personal touch beats stock photos hands-down.
• License fees are not prohibitive! You can legally use images for free or for a small fee from plenty of good sites like Stock.Xchng, Shutterstock or Fotolia.
• Be aware that most images have an owner – and use a tool like Google Image Search to check where the picture you like actually came from before publishing it.
• If you’re using images of you and your business, be nice and credit your photographer.
• Don’t be too quick to share images on social media. Copyright applies there, too.