Sunday, March 19, 2006

www.instant-copyright-lawyer.com

As I keep plugging along here with Flickr.com and adding pictures from a rapidly expanding catalogue, I was checking up on my licensing options as the site will allow you several different levels of legal protection as you share images.

As part of this, Flickr has set up a Copyright Wizard to allow you to work your way through these steps and decide which reservations are right for you. The funny thing is that in all, it's just legal postscripts on your posts and nothing really prevents others from ripping off your images without paying you for them.

Better yet is that anyone with serious cash isn't looking at that site, littered with pictures of pets and family vacations, and trying to dig up images for national ad campaigns, so at most it'd be someone looking for blog images or cheap decorations for their apartment. Really, can you see some Fortune 50 company looking for art for their ad copy and running a Google search instead of clearing all the legal hurdles and making sure their images are under their complete control?

Exactly.

After working at newspapers, it's pretty clear cut what you can and can't do in terms of appropriation of images and I try to be somewhat sensitive to that in the images I use for posts. I make sure to cite where they came from and photographer credits when available and should anyone ever ask to have an image removed, I'd take it down as quickly as I could.

Still, I bet most folks would just be looking for a few bucks for their trouble and I can safely say I have yet to see a dime for this blog and doubt I ever will.

In the meantime, I'll just sit and wait and keep an eye on the ads in the Sunday papers. Stealing from snot-nosed amateurs like me would be the perfect crime.

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