Question about usage rights for digital photos

[Gregg Bell]

Okay, I know there are all kinds of license and usage rights when it comes to digital photos. I pay close attention to all that when I buy a photo for using it on an ebook cover. But I like to post interesting pics on Twitter and there are so few places that you can find absolutely free (usually public domain) digital photos to use (even without attribution). And many places have usage rights filters, and once you choose a filter like 'labeled for noncommerical use with modification' the photos available for the most part stink.

I am not using any photos commercially. I'm just posting them on Twitter. What I want to do is just tweet whatever photo I find on Google Images or wherever. And in other places like Flickr or Creative Commons or Wikimedia I want to post the photos without researching the licensing requirements (time consuming) and giving the attribution often requested.

What happens if I tweet a licensed photo or don't give attribution? Is somebody going to sue me?

And hey, I'm a writer. I don't want people pirating my stuff. But I actually wouldn't mind them spreading it around a bit to increase my exposure.

So I kind of know the answer to all my questions, but I wanted to see what your guys experience is with this and if maybe you could help me adopt a reasonable strategy for posting photos. Thanks!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Okay, I know there are all kinds of license and usage rights when it comes to digital photos. I pay close attention to all that when I buy a photo for using it on an ebook cover. But I like to post interesting pics on Twitter and there are so few places that you can find absolutely free (usually public domain) digital photos to use (even without attribution). And many places have usage rights filters, and once you choose a filter like 'labeled for noncommerical use with modification' the photos available for the most part stink.

I am not using any photos commercially. I'm just posting them on Twitter. What I want to do is just tweet whatever photo I find on Google Images or wherever. And in other places like Flickr or Creative Commons or Wikimedia I want to post the photos without researching the licensing requirements (time consuming) and giving the attribution often requested.

What happens if I tweet a licensed photo or don't give attribution? Is somebody going to sue me?

And hey, I'm a writer. I don't want people pirating my stuff. But I actually wouldn't mind them spreading it around a bit to increase my exposure.

So I kind of know the answer to all my questions, but I wanted to see what your guys experience is with this and if maybe you could help me adopt a reasonable strategy for posting photos. Thanks!

Gregg:

You're not thinking that through. If you repost a blog, you're stealing it. I mean, you can do all sorts of things; you can even attribute it, but if you post a blog on your blog, in toto, you've infringed it. The same EXACT thing is true with a photo. Yes, people share them, but they share the links TO the photo, on the originator's page--not just lift the image and post it.

If you want to "share" images that you happen to stumble across on a Google search, you follow the image back to its origin, and post a link TO it. You don't copy it and then post it as if it's yours. It isn't. When you say this:

And hey, I'm a writer. I don't want people pirating my stuff. But I actually wouldn't mind them spreading it around a bit to increase my exposure.

(italic emphasis added)

...you're thinking of a solitary photo as something akin to 10 paragraphs from your 100K-word book. But it isn't like that; a photo is a complete thing, an entire entity, just as is your book. You don't want your entire novel picked up and shared freely around the internet, right? Well, to the photographer, that photo may be a source of income, too. You can't know, unless you research the rights, I'm sorry to say. It's woefully easy to make off with images on the Net, and sadly, everyone does it. Hell, even I've inadvertently reposted some Ihascheezburger funnies, from time to time (but at least, thank heavens, those have the copyright ON them).

It's simple: post the link TO the image, not the image itself, and make sure you are allowed to before you do so.

(hell, I'm still tracking down a particular image I'm dying to use in a video. Even searching with Tineye. {sigh}. As the Stones said, "you can't always get what you want.")

OR, if you don't want to do that, limit yourself to CC searches (and be sure you check THOSE licenses, too--most are NOT allowed for commercial use, which, if you're posting them to call attention to you, your blog, all in connection with your BOOK, is still, arguably, commercial use.)

Hitch

[GMcG]

When I had a gallery at flickr, there were some guys who copied my photos and posted them in their own gallery as if they were theirs. They even cut off my signature. I didn't like that at all. The photos were mine!
Don't post other people's photos, link to them.

George

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Gregg:

You're not thinking that through. If you repost a blog, you're stealing it. I mean, you can do all sorts of things; you can even attribute it, but if you post a blog on your blog, in toto, you've infringed it. The same EXACT thing is true with a photo. Yes, people share them, but they share the links TO the photo, on the originator's page--not just lift the image and post it.

If you want to "share" images that you happen to stumble across on a Google search, you follow the image back to its origin, and post a link TO it. You don't copy it and then post it as if it's yours. It isn't. When you say this:


(italic emphasis added)

...you're thinking of a solitary photo as something akin to 10 paragraphs from your 100K-word book. But it isn't like that; a photo is a complete thing, an entire entity, just as is your book. You don't want your entire novel picked up and shared freely around the internet, right? Well, to the photographer, that photo may be a source of income, too. You can't know, unless you research the rights, I'm sorry to say. It's woefully easy to make off with images on the Net, and sadly, everyone does it. Hell, even I've inadvertently reposted some Ihascheezburger funnies, from time to time (but at least, thank heavens, those have the copyright ON them).

It's simple: post the link TO the image, not the image itself, and make sure you are allowed to before you do so.

(hell, I'm still tracking down a particular image I'm dying to use in a video. Even searching with Tineye. {sigh}. As the Stones said, "you can't always get what you want.")

OR, if you don't want to do that, limit yourself to CC searches (and be sure you check THOSE licenses, too--most are NOT allowed for commercial use, which, if you're posting them to call attention to you, your blog, all in connection with your BOOK, is still, arguably, commercial use.)

Hitch

Hi Hitch,

Thanks for the response. I'm very careful about which photos I use. I don't steal anybody's stuff. And I hear you about a photo being an entirety in its own right. But posting a link on Twitter is pointless because it is the photo itself that I want to share. (Nobody is going to go to a link with my message of : Great photo of the Taj Mahal.)

And CC and Wikimedia boast that they have tons of public domain stuff but I need to research the individual photo's license requirements. That is such a waste of time. You search and search and search and find something you really love and, oh, sorry, that one the license says it can't be used. As far as I know (I have looked--if you know of one please tell me) there is no filter on either of those sites to isolate PD photos. Same thing with museums proclaiming they're all PD happy. 'Research the license of each individual photo.'

And of course hardly anybody on FB or Twitter is using PD images and hardly anybody is posting links to those photos. But when I was little I used to tell my Mom, 'My friend Brian is getting to do (fill in the blank).' And my mother would say, "I don't care if the whole world is doing it. You're not."

So I'm cool.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by GMcG

When I had a gallery at flickr, there were some guys who copied my photos and posted them in their own gallery as if they were theirs. They even cut off my signature. I didn't like that at all. The photos were mine!
Don't post other people's photos, link to them.

George

George, Thanks buddy. I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I really liked a photo on Flickr and wanted to use it for the background of an ebook cover. I contacted the photographer. He requested attribution and I did so.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

What happens if I tweet a licensed photo or don't give attribution? Is somebody going to sue me?

It's copyright infringement, plain and simple. Absolutely no different to someone posting a copy of one of your books on their web site without your permission.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

George, Thanks buddy. I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I really liked a photo on Flickr and wanted to use it for the background of an ebook cover. I contacted the photographer. He requested attribution and I did so.

Gregg:

You do realize that if you post a link to a photo on twitter, using something like Hootsuite, whatever, the image will show up as though you'd put it IN the post, right? And you're in good shape? Both the link TO, and a thumbnail of the image will display? Simply say, "from X," And you are thereby following the rules?

How are you posting them now? Are you downloading images and then...what are you doing?

Hitch

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Gregg:

You do realize that if you post a link to a photo on twitter, using something like Hootsuite, whatever, the image will show up as though you'd put it IN the post, right? And you're in good shape? Both the link TO, and a thumbnail of the image will display? Simply say, "from X," And you are thereby following the rules?

How are you posting them now? Are you downloading images and then...what are you doing?

Hitch

This. Link and let the tools do their jobs.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Gregg:

You do realize that if you post a link to a photo on twitter, using something like Hootsuite, whatever, the image will show up as though you'd put it IN the post, right? And you're in good shape? Both the link TO, and a thumbnail of the image will display? Simply say, "from X," And you are thereby following the rules?

How are you posting them now? Are you downloading images and then...what are you doing?

Hitch

As you can see, when I post the photo's link in the tweet, the photo or the photo's thumbnail is not displayed. (see 121 screenshot). The person who wants to see the photo has to click on the photo's link to see it. And the whole purpose is to have the photo already displayed in the stream. As I have done in screenshot 122.

What I've been doing is going to places that have free photos that don't require attribution, or places that have photos in the public domain (which you can find in Bing's search engine), downloading the images, resizing them and then posting them using the camera icon in Twitter's tweet composition box.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

What I've been doing is going to places that have free photos that don't require attribution, or places that have photos in the public domain (which you can find in Bing's search engine), downloading the images, resizing them and then posting them using the camera icon in Twitter's tweet composition box.

Right. You can't do that without the permission of the copyright holder.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Right. You can't do that without the permission of the copyright holder.

Hi Harry. I wasn't sure what you were saying. You seemed to agree with me, (by saying "right"), then you said I can't do that.

But, for instance, how can I even get permission of the copyright holder if the photo is in the public domain?

[HarryT]

I meant "right, that's what you're doing, is it?"

If a photograph is in the public domain, there is no copyright holder, and you can do whatever you want with it. But just because you find a photograph on the internet certainly doesn't mean that it's in the public domain.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Hi Harry. I wasn't sure what you were saying. You seemed to agree with me, (by saying "right"), then you said I can't do that.

But, for instance, how can I even get permission of the copyright holder if the photo is in the public domain?

Gregg:

If the photo, image or illustration is REALLY in the PD, you don't need his/her permission. But, are you determining this by looking for the rights? Just because you use a CC search, or tell Goog to look for PD, doesn't mean that what's returned IS in the PD. When you track down an image on, say, Flickr, usually it will have CC rights, but you have to credit the photographer. CC is not "PD." It's similar, but not the same. PD means that the creator has either passed away, and it's been X years since s/he died, or, s/he deliberately put it INTO the PD, overtly and expressly.

You are not really being clear about the what/how you do. In your first post, you pretty much said, "I just want to be able to use these photos without doing all the work of tracking down the owners and permissions and just using it," arguing that you are not using it for commercial purposes, but you are. You're an author; you have a twitter account, and you can't realistically argue that you've NEVER posted a link to your book's sales page on Twitter, FB, etc., for people to look at and hopefully buy. That makes it pretty "commercial."

So, look, as we've all told you: get a tweeting and social media tool, like Hootsuite. You can probably use their free version, or their cheap version. It's only a few bucks a month. Then you can put image urls in all you want (and Hootsuite automatically shortens them for you, too). Or one of the other platforms--Mac users like another one better, that's a lot like HS.

It's either that, or do all the heavy lifting. There isn't an in-between. Sorry, but that's the way it is. As previously mentioned, you wouldn't like it if people posted free copies of your entire book all over the net, either. Photographers, illustrators, font creators--all these people have the same Intellectual Property rights that you do. Use the right tools, and you can worry a lot less about it. Or do the work. Or use stuff that's on archives.org only.

Hitch

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Or use stuff that's on archives.org only.

I'm afraid even that's not a satisfactory solution. Unfortunately there's an awful lot of material on archive.org that shouldn't be there.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I meant "right, that's what you're doing, is it?"

If a photograph is in the public domain, there is no copyright holder, and you can do whatever you want with it. But just because you find a photograph on the internet certainly doesn't mean that it's in the public domain.

So you meant "right, you're wrong." LOL

I'm getting it, Harry. Thx.