Copyright infringement has always been a hot topic for internet users. For a while, everyone it seemed was downloading illegal music and movies. College students copying papers. And now the stealing of photos. It’s so easy to punch up a photo from Google Images and copy and paste it into your blog. Unfortunately it can also cost you some serious bucks to go with it. Ragan.com found out the hard way when they got hit by a lawsuit for $8000.
Not knowing or understanding the law, posting the wrong photo by accident, even linking the photo to the original source and giving proper credit cannot free you of infringement liability. Your best bet is to get free photos from a site like Flickr, just be careful to check the rules of use laid down by the owner of the photo. Some can be used for free and some require a fee, or some can only be used for non-commercial reasons.
A great site for information on copyright infringement is WikiHow. Or you could go straight to the source and get some hard definitions from the U.S. Copyright Office. Techradar.com did an article on the 12 best places to get free images that is a good place to start. I’ll be posting some links on my blog in the future.
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