Use of others' photos (1 Viewer)

I've been a little concerned recently with which photos (that do not belong to myself) I'm aloud to use and for which purposes.

If, for example, I wanted to use internet sourced pictures in the aid of an ID thread is this acceptable? On the other hand, is it ok to use photos for use in a poster? I find this less acceptable but was wondering were you would stand on the subject.

I have no intention of "stealing" any photos which someone has gone through the hard effort of producing, I simply want to know where to draw the line so as not to offend anyone,

Cheers,

Hi Samuel

Here is a link to the Birdforum Policy.

Hope this helps.

delia todd said:

Hi Samuel

Here is a link to the Birdforum Policy.

Hope this helps.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that Delia Todd :t:

Away from Birdforum, I think it's best to try and contact the photographer in question before using a photo, if that's not possible and as long as the photo is being used in a non-commercial way then I personally see no problem in it.

Look out for photos that have been released under Creative Commons licencing by the photographer; such photos are intended for sharing.

In most of Europe photographs are automatically under copyright protection. This means that strictly speaking, all you can do is link to them to stay strictly legal, unless they have been released under a license for use by others as indicated by Telephoto Paul (there are quite a few such photos available on Wikipedia).

For a poster that is to be published, that is much the safest route. Or contact the photographer and ask them whether it's okay to use their photo - if it's for a charitable organization in particular, they may say yes and give you a better resolution copy even. They will probably want to be acknowledged somewhere.

Of course, you might ask what the downside is of using a photo illegally, and the answer is that it is very unlikely that anybody will sue you for it, and even if they do, they probably can't prove that you have caused them economic damage.

But does that make it right to make use of somebody else's work without their permission?

Andrea

Samuel Perfect said:

I've been a little concerned recently with which photos (that do not belong to myself) I'm aloud to use and for which purposes.

If, for example, I wanted to use internet sourced pictures in the aid of an ID thread is this acceptable? On the other hand, is it ok to use photos for use in a poster? I find this less acceptable but was wondering were you would stand on the subject.

I have no intention of "stealing" any photos which someone has gone through the hard effort of producing, I simply want to know where to draw the line so as not to offend anyone,

Cheers,

Click to expand...

The general rule is if you haven't created it, don't use it. Copyright law is automatically awarded to creators of any work, and something being found on the Internet does not change this whatsoever.

As others have said, Creative Commons is a good source of images you CAN use. Check out www.compfight.org, which is a good site to find them. However do read licenses very carefully, as different works will be licensed differently. For example most will require a credit to the author, some will stipulate they can only be used non-commercially, and others will stipulate you cannot alter them (no derivative works) which means you'll be unable to make a poster of them.

It isn't a case of not offending people; it's a case of not breaking the law. It's rare, but blog users have been sued sizeable sums for using images.

Cheers for the feedback :t:

I never use other peoples photos in my blogs. It was more intended to settle my thoughts as to whether or not I could use an internet sourced photo in aid of an ID thread.

Of course, there is no gain in it for me but I suppose this wouldn't make much of a difference.

Samuel Perfect said:

Cheers for the feedback :t:

I never use other peoples photos in my blogs. It was more intended to settle my thoughts as to whether or not I could use an internet sourced photo in aid of an ID thread.

Of course, there is no gain in it for me but I suppose this wouldn't make much of a difference.

Click to expand...

Surely you just link to the photo? That's what everyone else does, and is probably what the images owner wants .. ie more traffic (ok often its to the image as a standalone, but usually that would have some means of getting to their website etc if the observer so desired). I don't think anyone could have any problems with that - that is probably the definition of the www.

(I guess if you wanted to take an image and then manipulate it or add annotations that would be have to be an image you had permissions to use)