It Must Be Free If It’s On The Internet, Right?
Not too long ago, we randomly heard about this young people project that fought against intellectual property and was seeking to promote copying without restrictions. And guess what? They even had a Crowdfunding project for this, meaning they needed money to produce some tear-jerking episodes about how beautiful and natural cheating is, and how copyrights hold back the working society. Aha! But in order to produce this content they needed cash, equipment and resources. So even they cannot work for free, now can they? They praised themselves for conducting a project whose content will be available to everyone, and yet they have a star indicating the ownership of this project, serving as a barter to using the produced content in exchange for advertising. What they failed to realize, however, is that through these very actions, they prove that artists must be paid and their works should be legally protected by copyrights. They are promoting today’s reality.
Some of you may not even realize when and how you're violating copyright laws, and since we are visual experts, our team at Soply decided to create a simple guide, which can help you in knowing what's right and wrong in each case. --> Note, copyright is relevant to all mediums, from social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin etc.), to blogs (personal, collective, generalist, niche etc.), to online publications, and information sites, forums, newsletters etc.
So what exactly are copyrights you may ask? Shortly put, they are the claim of each author to decide what happens to his/her work, and their right to decide whether, and under what conditions, their own art (such as photography in today’s case) can be further used. We’ll most likely never see anyone serving jail time for stealing a picture, and we should never have to. But it is equally true that those who violate these copyrights are to be called anything but professional artists.
Types of Photography in Terms of Copyright
All photos are copyrighted. There are no images created out of thin air. If people still dispute on who created the world, we most certainly can assure you that photographs have an author too. And only they (with very few exceptions) can decide what happens to their pictures. The original image sources are thus the authors, while search engines, social networks, photo websites, all represent only ways to reach these authors. Google Images, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Weheartit and other similar sites do not serve as image sources. And most definitely not copyright free image sources. When it comes to copyright, we will find images online framed in several categories:
1. Photos with all rights reserved (for stock, release, available at an extra cost). These represent the overwhelming majority of images that can be found online. When you see a picture on the Internet, and are not familiar with its origin, you might as well include it in this category. They are usually taken by professional photographers, and usually sold via news agencies, stock image banks, photography websites, or straight from photographers, after direct negotiations. These can be used afterwards in conditions mutually agreed upon between the seller and customer (with or without citing the source, depending on the image use agreement form signed).
2. Free photos for use in a particular context (press photos). These are usually images provided by companies (or other various institutions or public figures) to popularise their work. They are mostly taken by professional photographers, and can be used for free in the context in which they were originally offered (usually accompanied by the Terms and Conditions on official websites on which these are available), but not for other purposes.
3. Free photos in exchange for quoting the source (creative commons). Estimates show these do not exceed 1% of all images that are found on the Internet, mostly being taken by amateur photographers, who in return expect nothing more than public appreciation, popularity, visitors etc. An important note to make is that the images available under the Creative Commons License may be of different types, with different restrictions in use. You will notice that approximately 70% of the images available in exchange for citing sources cannot be used for commercial purposes, and that only the author of the picture may attribute its creative commons license.
4. Free photos (public domain). In most cases than not, free photos are usually lower-quality images than others (possibly were unable to be sold, and are offered for free to the public). As you may suspect, most are amateur photographs and their distribution follows certain advantages, such as excessive advertising on the sites from which they can be downloaded. Furthermore, using these images in commercial actions is very risky and can affect a company's activity, since it’s not uncommon for stolen images with all rights reserved to slip in. You know how the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
Using Pictures in Social Networks
We will cover only Facebook due to its immense popularity and limited space of this article. This social channel has two ways of displaying images:
Sharing is used when you do not have (or do not know if you have) the right to use the image, but still want to popularize it. You are not violating the copyrights of whoever posted it initially and all subsequent distributions are also counted to him.
Posting (publishing) images is used only when you have the right to use those images, which is applicable to what we already covered above in ‘Types of Photography in Terms of Copyright’. Basically, if you copy an image into the computer, and from there post it on Facebook, you must ensure that you have the legal and moral right to do so.
The same principles are used for other social networks too, be it these functions are called differently (pin/repin on Pinterest; tweet/retweet on Twitter etc.). However, just because you only have 140 characters room to stretch, or 10 different boards to fill up, not everything on the Internet is free to post. Do not mistake free access to information with the right to use this information created by others to your own liking.
But we understand that often times, it inevitably all leads up to budget, right? Let’s say the budget is indeed very (very!) low, one can still find a 15$ subscription/ per week with 50 images included. Heck, Soply is built around the idea of convenient pricing, where you are at the helm when deciding to whom and how much are you willing to pay. Trust us, you’ll feel far more satisfied knowing you have your own created content in a high quality professional manner, with all image use rights, than if you had blended in with the crowds with a second-rate stock photo.
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