2 Signs Your Website Images Infringe Copyright and Could Cost You Money
You published an impeccable article on your website, and you'd like to color it with a sexy photo. Your social media advisors told you that photos are super shareable online, are one of top reasons that status updates get shared on Facebook business pages, and are the only way to share a page via Pinterest. If a web page has no photo, it can't be added to the vast collection of inspirational web pages in Pinterest. And then Twitter joined in the fun and made it so that photos attached to a tweet are revealed in the news stream.
So, it's time to grab a photo to illustrate your message! The fastest way to do it is by Googling your subject matter. However, what comes up in the search results may cost you a pretty penny once you publish it on your website. Whether you or your staff is researching photos, have 100% confidence of who holds the copyright for the image and if there is a licensing fee for it. If there are photos on your website right now that you are not 100% certain about, here are two tell-tale signs that you will be served with a cease-and-desist letter from a major image clearing house like Getty Images or Shutterstock:
1. The photo is really good looking with perfect lighting, and no watermark!
So you found the most perfect image to illustrate the message behind an article, and the people in the photo are perfect looking. The lighting is great, their expressions are right on the money. And hey, it even has a cool filter-effect like all of those Instagram photos floating around!
PULL IT: This image is so good looking, that it is probably managed by a major image clearing house. A website may have legitimately purchased the rights to the image and published it on their website. When the rights are purchased, the website owner gets a copy of the photo without a watermark on it. When you do a Google Image search, that photo from that other company's website may be included in your image results - without the watermark. If you right click on it and suck it down onto your computer and publish it to your website, or possibly even to your Facebook business page, you have just stollen the image and Getty Images, Shuttersock or other deep-pocketed companies will eventually find it on your website through the use of their image-finding software. Their next step is to send you a letter demanding that you take it down -- and pay hundreds or thousand of dollars for using it. Doesn't matter if you didn't intend to steal it. If you used it, you'll have to pay up.
2. The photo is a celebrity.
Just don't go here. If the photo is of a celebrity, then you can bet a paparazzi got paid a bit of coin for that, and now has the photo represented by Getty Images hoping that other newspapers and magazines will pay for the rights to use it. Just because you found it in Google Images doesn't mean you are able to freely use it.
Proceed with caution when researching photos to use for your website!
