HELP! Is this legal?!

If you just grabbed photos from other sites without permission, the odds are that you're violating someone's copyright. The fact that a picture is online does not mean it's free for anyone to use who wants to.


Paul

From what you have read online, can you answer your own question?

If not, ask a lawyer if you have doubts. But this will probably cost a lot of $$$'s.

What are you unsure of exactly?

how about google images?

are their search results displaying someone elses pictures on their results pages?

Considering that people have probably been sued for TRILLIONS over hundreds of years, HOW can you ask how can they do it? Between copyrights, trademarks. AJ, they are on touchy soil anyway. They DO say to check copyrights, and don't actually use or claim ownership of the pictures.

Steve

Im not saying google is right or wrong in doing what they're doing ... Im jus say'n they take someone else images and put them on their results pages.

The difference between most websites and google is that every one needs google! I see loads of my photos on google images but I would never question it as google does something important for me by displaying my website and linking to it. If i saw my pictures on another website that wasnt advertising me I would ask them to be removed.

Thanks guys for some feedback. I already took down all the pictures and will probably use bought photos in the near future.

And embedding things from youtube will always be okay right?

nowk,
That's probably a good decision you made if you don't know who took the pictures.

One tip that may be helpful is to search for Creative Commons License photos that can be used commercially.

Just Google it.

There is a search engine devoted to helping you find them...just double check the license to make sure you use the correct attribution for what you are trying to do.

Also, there are some pretty decent free stock photography websites that you can find nowadays as well.

One more tip...if you do decide to buy stock photos, use the stockphoto comparison tool at SpiderPic to make sure you get the best price... SpiderPic

There is often a wide range of prices for the exact same photo.

All the best,
Jack Duncan

why not just use public domain photos or royalty free stock photos.

stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site

Will do. Thanks for the tips on looking for photos!!

There's nothing wrong with embedding youtube videos on your site, that's what they have the embed function for, so people can do exactly that. Nothing wrong with that, at all.

You can use pictures from http://www.flickr.com/ without any problems.

Talk about legal /ilegal

image/conten/otherthing

if that in public domain that is legal

but if you copy and link to it is legal people has no problem when you copy something and make them get benefit

if some one copy my article and then put the link
personaly no problem for me.

all about what you do !

anything you publish and you said belong to you that is ilegal.

The thing is people wan't do that becouse of traffic, it will not give you best consideration by google.

if you can make original.That much better and you far from problem.

that my opinion, anyone can give me feed back

i prefer photostock websites, there are a lot of royalty free images you can use for free.

Using any image online that doesn't specifically indicate whether the image is free to use (unless you negotiated use rights) is like playing russian roulette. Sooner or later, someone's gonna get hurt.

If you use something without getting permission (in writing, and/or by purchasing specific rights) and nobody says anything about it doesn't mean it is OK. It may just be that you haven't been noticed by the copyright owner. You may go on blissfully unaware for some time (maybe even years) before they find out, and at that point, you may really be between a rock and a hard place. The copyright owner has a right to charge you for the use, (or make you remove it if you don't pay what they want) and if it has become a de-facto trademark or similarity image for your product, you can lose company image or product sales overnight.

It's far better to be sure that you have appropriate rights to the images you use. There are quite a number of places you can get free or low cost images. By the way, if you find an image that has a watermark (a shadowy imprint superimposed on the image) you can bet that it IS a copyrighted image. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to determine the proper owner of an image to purchase the rights you need.

Also, when purchasing use rights, make sure they are appropriate for your intended use. For example, if the purchase rights don't specifically mention use on a web site, you should contact the copyright owner to see if they allow use of the image on a web site, and under what conditions. I've run across a number if images that had specific costs for various print uses (brochures, magazines, books and such) but not online "display". A (very) few have even restricted use on the internet, but on the other hand, I've found some that were free to use as long as attribution was provided (while still charging for print use). Every image is a little different, depending on the value the owner puts on it.

If you get images (or sound files) from a client for inclusion in a web site, always ask your client if they have rights to use the images (or other materials). Back when I was making web sites for other people for a living, I received a number of images that looked familiar. Upon checking around, I found they belonged to a competitor that had not provided permission. Needless to say, this would have resulted in a lot of work that would have had to be redone, not to mention the potential legal issues...
Ever since, I've always been careful about image copyrights, even to the point of taking my own pictures whenever possible, and generate my own graphic elements when time permits.