Home > General > Affiliate Marketing Forum

---

Image compliance (22)

---

I am building a blog in a highly competitive niche that has huge blogs with 100's to 100's of images. I'll use food/recipes as an example though it's not my targeted niche (but it's a great example of MANY images on sites)...

1. How does one know if an image is 'owned' and not in the public domain? I see some of the big blogs have 1000s of images and I doubt they paid for all of them.

EX...Searching for chocolate cake in google images has ~googol of images, and few have any indication they are 'owned'.

Their terms often make claims such as , "You should assume that everything you see or read on Hershey's web sites is copyrighted unless otherwise noted".

Maybe I'll have a claim that ""You should assume that everything you see or read on the internet is copyrighted and owned by Illya, (unless otherwise noted of course)".



Thanks
Illya (assume I own the rights to this name unless otherwise noted) Kuryakin

---

He might want to fight you for the rights to that name.

---

http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search

select usage rights

---

Assume everything is copyrighted and pay for images. If you get busted by Masterfile or Getty it will cost you much more. It's not pretty when you get an "invoice" for a small image in the amount of $16,000.00 USD.

---

I have a blog where I've used google images, but I'm cleaning it up now that it's getting traction. Use shutterstock, they let you dl 25 images/day for $250/month

---

I would just use whatever you want... ive had people contact me / my hosting and then I removed it. Only happened once though and it wasnt a big deal. No one will sue you just like that for hosting an image on your blog.


If it was that profitable, then these companies could just hire people to hack into other peoples blogs and post thier copyrighted images and bam make a ton of money LOL.

---

I don't think it works that way. You can probably get away with it if it's user generated content. Not if you're posting it on your blog yourself. I'd still try to be safe and use stock images from the get-go.

Your choice though. If your blog gets volume, you can almost expect to get hit.

---

Well you could always say it was a quest poster, or you hired a VA to post for you, or a hacker put it there, or etc etc etc. The possibility is super slim of them "proving beyond reasonable doubt" that you were the one that took that image from the copyrighted site and put it on your blog. Another thing you can say is that you took it from xxxxxxx site. As long as they didnt have copyrights either you can put the blame on them and say you didnt know it was copyrighted since their blog didnt say anything about it so they take the hit.

---

I'd hope you're right since there are hundreds of unpaid images that my writers have used. Still, I think shutterstock's $250/mo. subscription is a pretty good deal if you wanna stay safe going forward (comes out to $.33/image). Pretty decent images as well.

---

Very cool. Didn't know about this. Thanks.


Yeah, I saw the $250/mo subscription option as well. And since I will be having multiple posts/images per day I guess it's best to just pay for them from the get go.


Thanks everyone.

---

This does not absolve you of liability in anyway and in the end it doesn't matter because anyone can sue anybody for anything in the lovely USA and as a business you cannot represent yourself and are forced to defend any claims made against you in a court of law....

lets not forget the whole "POF dating image thing" where a family sued POF for images used in advertising....images that could be classed as 3 party content...yet they are the ones who have to defend it...

I have to be clear here folks....if your concerned about what your doing best I advice I can give is for you to consult with a lawyer.....the cost of getting sued is far far far more then the few hundo's its gonna cost you to get good solid legal advice....

---

Just to be on the safe side I use two methods:

- I take a HD image and crop what I need exactly (apple pie as an example)
- put a tiny link to the source saying "credits", usually to flickr

---

That brings up an interesting question: When an image is copyrighted, what defines the image so it can be uniquely identified? If you crop or alter in any way a chocolate cake image, how does this altered image retain the copyright? A person in the pic can lend uniqueness to the image, but a slice of cake?

To reinterate, I'm playing it safe and buying the images, but 'inquiring minds want to know'

---

Yeah, I've always wondered this as well. I think if you crop it and change some aspect of the image, it becomes "art." Not entirely positive though.

---

I'm not sure about copyright issues, but rotating an image just a little bit makes it unique for Google.

---

Bringing up an old thread I know but it makes sense to continue the discussion in here:

Has anybody had any experience with posting images to Facebook pages?

An an example there are pages out there with millions of likes posting daily glamour shots of girls.. Is it likely these have come from the likes of Shutterstock or are they being lifted?

---

They're quite likely being lifted. Certainly that's the case with a lot of the "hot girls" blogs around the Web.

---

please don't take any of the opinions in here as legal advice, I just spilled my coffee laughing at some of these affiliate lawyers. Best advice here is from polar, if you're concerned, talk to an actual lawyer.

As far as those FB groups go, some of them may have deals setup with the photographers who have license to those photos, but if it looks like an affiliate page, there is a high chance they do not own the rights to any of it. Most likely INTL affiliates in countries where they think there's little likelihood of them being sued. I've seen some the pages you're referring to and if you look closely, you can find errors in the English which leads me to believe that a good bit of them are not US based though I could be totally wrong. Either way, when you use something you don't own, there is always a risk, it's just about balancing out the likelihood of getting sued vs how much it would cost to get the content legitimately.

---

Back on this: how would a stock images firm detect unauthorised use within a creative banner? Surely there would be quite a lot of hoops to jump through to find the perpetrator as opposed to a blog?

Sometimes the screengrab of a stock thumbnail is big enough for a small ad. Anyone ever heard stories of anyone getting into trouble for that?

---

Enjoy folks - http://www.sxc.hu/

---

This is an important topic. Has anyone talked to any lawyers? I'd love to know if it's possible to crop an official photo and get away with it. For example



If you crop it even further so it doesn't show the name or logo, and maybe even mirror it, is it still in violation?

---

I'm afraid that's still a copyright violation in most countries that are signatories of the Berne Convention (pretty much everywhere).

What you're creating is called a "derivative work": the copyright holder of the original work still has their original legal rights to the image.

(IANAL, but I know copyright law pretty well.)

---

Home > General > Affiliate Marketing Forum