Are you a blogger? Do you use social media sites like Pinterest? If so, you will want to be very aware of copyright infringement. Getty Images is trolling the Internet using the software PicScout that they purchased last year for $20 million. If Getty Images finds that you use any of their images illegally, they will come after you with a cease and desist letter.
But that won’t be the last of it. You can try to ignore the letter, but they will demand payment even if you remove the image or images because you used it. They refer to Time Machine and any other tools that can bring back archived websites. If you use your blog to promote your services or product, Getty Images will come after you. The charge for the use of the image can be $1,400 or more per image depending how long the image was on your site. You can negotiate with them, but you will have to pay something.
But what if you didn’t know the image was copyrighted? You may have even received permission to use the image from what you thought was the original owner of the image, but they weren’t the owner. They were just another blogger right-clicking on Google Images.
Photographers and artists are wanting their due credit and compensation for the use of their images. Getty Images is protecting them. You can avoid downloading any copyrighted images when you do a Google Images search by using ImageExchange, a nifty little plug-in that runs on the side of your browser that you can download from PicScout. As you browse images, any image that is hosted on microstock (or other agents) is found with details of the image owner and a link back to the relevant agent.
So now Getty Images is investigating the pinning and repinning of sites with images on Pinterest. They are in a huge battle. Pinterest is using software to affect the use of PicScout so there is no way to determine original copyright. Photographers are scanning Pinterest to see who has pinned and repinned their images and demanding that there is copyright infringement. ImageExchange may not work with Pinterest which could be a problem for you if you have several boards with questionable images.
So I downloaded ImageExchange and am using that before I look for any image to use on my site. I come from a family of artists (starving artists) who want to be compensated for their work. So where can you find images to use on your blog, website, or pin to Pinterest?
- Take them yourself and brand them with ImageExchange.
- Use ImageExchange when you search for images.
- Make sure that you get permission to use the image from the original artist or photographer. (this doesn’t always guarantee that you are okay)
- Pay for the image before you post.