Siegfried Kauder is a German Parliamentarian and campaigner against Internet piracy who was recently embarrassed when he was caught illegally using pictures on his website.
A common mistake by website developers and business owners is to use images on web pages which they don’t have permission to use. If you’re caught with unauthorised copyright material on your website, it can be embarrassing and, if the lawyers get involved, an expensive matter to settle.
Luckily there are a number of ways you can overcome the cost and risk involved with images through buying picutures from stock libraries, using free stock photography services, accessing material made available through Creative Commons or using material that is out of copyright.
Free Stock Photography services
The most popular sources of photographs for small business are the free stock services like RGB Stock or Stock.XCHNG, both of which are listed in our online resources page.
Both sites offer a range of free photos, although you do need to note the conditions as some photographs ask to be notified or require crediting and sometimes even permission before you can use their images.
Creative Commons
Many photographers make their content available to businesses through the Creative Commons licences. Again it’s important to check commercial use has been permitted and Creative Commons works usually require the work to be clearly attributed to the author. The Creative Commons website has a feature where you can search for available material.
Public Domain
Some works are not subject to copyright as the owner may have specifically waived their rights or copyright has expired. The best source for historical photos is the Flickr Commons where some of the world’s leading cultural institutions have made their collections available over the net. Again it’s important to read the conditions carefully as they can vary between different organisations.
Web searches
Generally it’s not a good idea to take images straight from the web, however you can do an image search and find pictures that aren’t copyright. In Google’s Image search you can do this by selecting Advanced Image Search and ticking the Commercial Use box in the image rights.
Paid stock photography
Libraries of stock photography have been around for a century as a cost effective alternative to taking your own photos for advertising, promotions and displays. Paid stock photography services include Fotolia, iStockPhoto – owned by Getty Images who also operate the Stock.XCHNG site – and Fresh Stock who are associated with the free RGB Stock site. Both of these sites are also listed in our online resources page.
Contact the photographer
Often a photographer is quite happy to let you use their work. If you see something you like on the net, contact them directly. They may ask to be paid or they might grant you a free licence subject to conditions.
Take your own photos
A downside with stock photos is they can look the same as other websites. It doesn’t look good when you’ve used a photo that’s been used on hundreds of other sites.
The only guaranteed way to get unique images that reflect the personality and values of your business is to hire a photographer or take them yourself if you’re confident you can capture the right look and quality.
Images are an important part of our websites as they make the pages more appealing to both visitors and the search engines.
Whichever way you choose to get images for your website, make sure you have permission to use them.
Thank you, Paul. This is long overdue. As a professional photographer who is constantly battling with infringement of my images on websites (even web developers who should know better) this article could hopefully stem the flow of infringements and allow photographers to start to earn a living again! A majority of responses from infringers say “Oh, I saw this photograph on Google and I thought it was free because there was no copyright notice across the image”. It is not a requirement to embed copyright notices on images but all of my images on my website state ©Sheila Smart All rights reserved. My blog has many articles on fighting copyright infringement and may be enlightening to those who think because its on the net makes it free.
Hi,Please be aware that sometimes pirates steal images from legit sources and put them on’ Free websites’ , Flickr or other sources with a Creative Commons license without the photographers permission or consent.. We recently collected $10,000 from someone that states they obtained our image like that and caught it on their small biz site. So,innocence or ignorance will not get you off the hook.Photos are available to license at all price points.Why should they be free ? License them..keep artists in a position to be able to afford to create!
That’s a good point MD about people posting others’ works as their own. It’s not just free sites either, I’ve heard of this happening on paid sites as well.
As a far as paying creatives goes, you’ll get no argument from me. Unfortunately the web has created the illusion that all works, from photos to writing to software, should be free.
It’s a much bigger problem than what the eBusiness book covers and this is something I rant about a lot more on my personal blog such as this post;
http://paulwallbank.com/2012/01/21/successful-sources-will-not-be-paid/
Thanks for the comment, the issue you raise is a serious one.