Have you used photographs you've found online without the copyright owner's permission? In TechSoup's article
Borrowing Images from the Web: An FAQ we'll show you what you should consider before you take images from another Web site, and when it's OK to use them freely.
Joined on 02-22-2001
TechSoup Member
There is a great resource for free stock imagery that designers use to share images.
The website is: http://www.sxc.hu
When you search for images, go to advanced search and select No for Restricted Ok. This will give you image options that carry no copyright restrictions by the photographer in addition to their very basic license agreement. The image quality is very high.
I have found this to be a great resource for nonprofit websites and materials.
This is a great guide to the whole spectrum of using images from the web. Thank you!
I use a lot of web images for powerpoint presentations and if I'm not using my original images, the best source is creative commons licensed photos in flickr.
I made a
screencast on how to use flickr for this purpose.
It was of a blog post about presentations and visual resources
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/screencast/index.html
Joined on 10-06-2006
TechSoup Member
In the past, I've used Fotolia.com
They have a great selection of images at low costs (all the images on our site were $1 or $2 for perpetual licenses).
It's too hard to try to determine definitively if a picture is protected or not. One site that may say 'free clipart' may have actually borrowed the clipart from a commercial collection.
Generally I choose to pay a little now in order to have the peace of mind later.
We have an online calendar site that uses images in listings to promote events. We often borrow images from venue sites or artist sites to promote their events/venues on the calendar site. Obtaining permissions for each image would be prohibitive, and asking us to take them down would hurt the venues and artists rather than help them.
Also, here's a listible.com list of free/non-royalty image collections.
Joined on 09-04-2006
TechSoup Member
Even if you find a picture on the web (or printed elsewhere) you can’t assume it’s in public domain just because it’s over 100 years old. The picture you are copying is a scan of that picture and that scan is protected. Think of it as a photograph of the photograph. This is why museums don’t allow photography; they control the image, they will gladly sell you an image that is copy right protected in the gift shop.
Stock photography has gotten cheap, stick to that. In the long run it’s a lot cheaper, even if you are right, it will be costly to defend yourself.
Joined on 12-29-2006
TechSoup Member
if i use the image that was pushed to my web browser by viewing the site, it's not stealing.
Heeger in your introductory post you describe yourself as a cybergriper, i.e. someone who sets-up web sites to parody someone else's web site. In this context I can understand a perspective that any image obtained from the 'net is free to be used for any purpose...
IMO such a broad-ranging perspective might not be totally accurate as there are times when you can use an image taken without permission from someone else's web site, and times when you cannot for reasons of law (eg for profit purposes - and by the way, web browsers are 'pull' technology, nothing is pushed to your browser unless you firstly select to 'pull' the page in question).
Would you mind providing a URL to some of your work? - It would be interesting and could be beneficial to this thread to see just how cybergripers can take and use copyright images.
Cheers, Don
If you search for creative commons "by" photos in flickr - some of which are excellent - you can use them as long as you give attribution. You don't have to ask.
I've found some great searching tools that can help you locate cc "by" images more easily and have analyzed some of the discussion around the merits and drawbacks to setting your own images free.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/creativecommons/index.html