Hi,

It occurred to me a few days ago that the images I took off google might be copyrighted.

I have recently made an image gallery page on my site, and collected some good pictures off google. But do you think that these pictures are copyrighted and shouldn't be used on my site?

Also, I took a few images and editted them to make banners...

I'm just wondering if what i'm doing is alright.

Thanks,
Gig

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Sounds like you have already put some time and effort into this, but better to think about this now than later. Especially since you could potentially get into serious trouble.

Google is a search tool. It uses thumbnails to point to pictures on the web when you look for images, just as it points to text in a standard search. The images have the protection that each site owner gives them.

If you take your own picture, put it on your site and say, "Here, this is free for anyone to use as they wish," then it is up for grabs. If you say, "Here, anyone who pays me $1,000 may use this picture once on one page of a site," then those are the terms.

I sure hope you don't get any large bills! But don't be fooled. You could.

In practice, the whole subject is so confusing and so often abused that a lot of people ignore the rules. But as you may recall, a lot of people who downloaded music in the past didn't get caught—for a long while. But when a few artists and recording studios decided to go after them a few got whopping bills (from lawsuits) in the thousands.

Personally I wouldn't take the chance myself. I like to get a sound night's sleep.

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James
Douglas County Master Gardeners
"We don't always get what we want, but we always get what we expect."

oh man that's just what i was afraid of...

I guess I should just delete the whole images section?

But what about the banners? I took a fwe images off the internet and editted them to make small banners for my pages...wouldn't want to take those off.

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Probably the most important question is exactly where you got the ones you would like to keep for the banners, etc. Since you are talking about only a few, try to figure out where you got them. A lot of images, such as those that come with MS Office components, are ok to use anyway, or you may be able to get permission depending on how you use them.

One of the biggest issues today relates to people in the pictures. Even if you have rights to the picture you have to have "model" releases for anyone in them.

On our Master Gardener site we cannot even post pictures taken at public events like our garden tours with people in them unless we have releases. The concern is that if we should show the picture of someone, say a woman being stalked by some creep, and he finds her because of our disclosure we could be sued. That is the crazy world we live in. Makes it challenging doesn't it.

Don't know if our requirements are due to a state law or just a University of Minnesota rule, although the potential for a lawsuit would be a consideration either way.

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Good Success!
James
Douglas County Master Gardeners
"We don't always get what we want, but we always get what we expect."