This post, by Roni Loren, originally appeared on her blog on 7/20/12.
So today I’m forgoing the usual Fill-Me-In Friday post to talk about something that I’ve been wanting to blog about for a while but couldn’t until the situation was wrapped up.
For those of you who are super observant, you may have noticed some changes on my blog over the last few months. Tumblr posts went away. Fiction Groupie disappeared. I deleted most of my Pinterest boards. The Boyfriend of the Week has changed format. And all my previous posts from the past three years–all 700 of them–now have new photos on them.
Why is that? What happened?
Well, you’ve probably figured it out from the title, but it’s because I’ve been involved in a case regarding a photo I used on my blog. Like most of you, I’m a casual blogger and learned my way into blogging by watching others. And one of the things I learned early on was that a post with a photo always looked nicer than one with just text. So I looked at what other people were doing for pictures. And mostly it seemed that everyone was grabbing pics from Google Images and pasting them on their sites. Sometimes with attribution, most of the time without. And when I asked others (or looked at disclaimers on websites and Tumblrs), it seemed that everyone agreed using pics that way was okay under Fair Use standards.
Here is an example of a disclaimer I found on a bigger site (name of blog removed):
THIS BLOG claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to its respectful owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.
And site after site had the same kind of thing. Just look on Tumblr, that same type of disclaimer is on a ton of them. And I’m thinking–well, that must mean it’s okay because if that weren’t true, sites like Tumblr and Pinterest couldn’t even exist because reposting pics is the whole POINT of those sites. So off I went doing what everyone else does–using pics from Google Images, putting a disclaimer on my site, etc.
Well on one random post, I grabbed one random picture off of google and then a few weeks later I got contacted by the photographer who owned that photo. He sent me a takedown notice, which I responded to immediately because I felt awful that I had unknowingly used a copyrighted pic. The pic was down within minutes. But that wasn’t going to cut it. He wanted compensation for the pic. A significant chunk of money that I couldn’t afford. I’m not going to go into the details but know that it was a lot of stress, lawyers had to get involved, and I had to pay money that I didn’t have for a use of a photo I didn’t need.
Read the rest of the post, which contains more information about limitations on using images on your blog and how to avoid getting into trouble, on Roni Loren’s blog.