Blog question: Can you legally use photos from web?

[spikedo]

Maybe a dumb question, but I keep seeing blogs using photos found on other websites. No articles are copied and the blog entry accompanying the photo is ofetn a summary of the original article or a different take on the original article. What is allowed? Any feedback from blog operators would be great.

 

[DDC_Cyn]

The answer is "no" - legally you can't use anyone else's work without permission. Can you and do people - yes. Look at the photo - if it's a personal picture I wouldn't. If it's a candid of an actor, I wouldn't (get permission). If it's a publicity picture from a movie, TV show, poster art, book cover, DVD, etc. Not likely you'll get in trouble as long as you don't claim it for your own.

Generic pics - use a free site like www.sxc.hu - lots of great stuff, royalty free. (but do credit for the use.)

 

[Barrucadu]

Of course you can - if the license on the picture permits that use. A good place to look is flickr, as you can restrict search results to a certain license.

 

[fatratstew]

You have to be careful but licence-free photos are out there, although the best ones usually need to be paid for.

 

[gaucho1976]

No, you can't. Easy as ABC. There's no way you can do it, exception made of celebrities (there's a legal way to do it) and some guvernment content as long as it is for educational/informational purposes and no profit.

However, you have sites that provide LEGAL content for free, I use http://www.sxc.hu/ but there are many more.

This being said, unless you have a really really REALLY big site, nobody will care much if you use an unlicensed pic, at worst they will send you a DMCA, now question is: do you REALLY need a picture found on google images or the such when you have images for free or you can buy almost any image you can think of for $1? IMHO, is better to do the right thing, as a designer I never used unlicensed content because that would mean potentially put my clients in trouble. Plus, if I don't find a free image I can pay $1. Heck, let's go crazy and buy 10 images for $10. It is worthy. Just my 2 cents, hope that helps