I Almost Got Sued Over A Picture on My Blog
I am usually a ‘rest on weekends’ kind of blogger, but I got home after the ping.sg gathering at Brewerkz and saw an unexpected comment on one on my post.
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Yes, I was told to take down an image from this post or risk legal actions being taken against me. Without a 2nd thought, I immediately went to my wordpress panel and removed the image from the post as well as the server. I don’t make money out of this blog, and being sued over one 350 x 232 pixel picture is simply not worth it.
It was DEFINITELY my fault for not checking out what creative commons Andie had for this picture. I simply screenshot it, did some cropping and attributed the picture by putting a link back to the source. Photographers/graphic artists place different creative commons on their work. Some like Andie, do not allow any form of copying and some do allow people to use their work provided that people attribute the source/originator.
There are 2 thoughts I have on this matter.
First, is of course a reminder for me to check on the allowed usage of any images I find on the internet before utilizing it. I still have a lot of images on this blog that I am too lazy to double check now. I’ll just wait for each one of the owners to come and threaten to sue my poor ass. 
Secondly, I will like to touch on what I feel about copyrights on images. In this new age of online media, your work can be easily seen by an enormous amount of people depending on how popular your website is. For the new age photographer/graphic artists, sale of their work is no more subjected to galleries at museum and promoted by the local newspaper. A budding photographer or graphic artist can just post images on a website and money and/or fame will come.
The worry of photographers and artists is that people will use their images for monetary means without their consent and their deserved share of the money. Some are also afraid that other people will claim their work as their own.
I just feel that photographers should just allow their work to be used with proper attribution of the images to the original authors. It’s FREE publicity if you think about it. With the new age of media, you will find that bloggers are great avenues of advertising your work.
Of course some might argue that not everyone will attribute the images to the original authors. And if a person wants to just download the image and use it for print, there is no way you can stop him/her.
Photographers and graphic artists should do the following to reduce the odds of the above happening.
1. Do not post full size images. Use web sized ones. Images of that small size looks good enough for the web while ensuring that people do not download it off the web and do respectable prints with it.
2. Watermark your images. By putting your name and/or your website on your images, you increase the odds of some trackbacks from the information on the image. Having dabbled in photography before, I know some photographers who hate to watermark their images as it ‘spoils’ the image and it is also troublesome to others to add watermarks for each image.
In my opinion, the benefits of allowing ‘free distribution’ of your work far outweighs an anal approach to “NO! YOU CANNOT USE MY IMAGE YOU *TOOT*. I’LL KEEL YOU!”. Sure, there may be more people who use your work without proper attribution and even some assholes who will claim your work as theirs, but you will get more recognition and business from the exposure you get from the few good ones.
Anyone got thoughts to add?
