STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY – Do I have the right to use it on Steemit?
Caution – I am not a lawyer – just a stock photographer with over 20 years in my business, so I guess I know a thing or two about my chosen career. I don't know a thing about cryptocurrency yet, but I do know a thing or two about stock photography.
So, can you use a stock image from the main sites like Getty Images, Alamy, Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, Depositphotos or Istock for example on Steemit? I mention those agencies in particular, because they represent my work and I am familiar with what the licensing contracts allow.
In all of these agencies, if you wish to use the image in even a personal blog, you must purchase a license to do so – and even then, such use is allowed only if there is no monetary reward from the blog. Where does that leave Steemit bloggers, who are not writing personal blogs, but receive monetary rewards for their efforts? Hopefully, you can make two and two add up to four! Steemit bloggers are profiting, and Steemit is profiting too.
Stock photographers are professionals who earn a living from licensing their work. Simply giving attribution, does not pay their bills, and does not encourage others to license the work. Just think of your profession, whatever that may be. What would you say to someone who wanted your services or your products for free? Maybe you are a real estate agent or a doctor or maybe you sell flowers or computers.
Wouldn't you be just thrilled to give away your work all the time for free just to get “attribution and exposure?” And wouldn't you just be thrilled if others found a way to make money off your services or products without your earning a cent? You would be delighted of course! And just think about how you would provide for your families! I'm being facetious, of course, but you get the point!
So, what about making a link back to where the image is licensed, then? That's a great idea, but you still can't download the image and use it! You can provide a link, but that does not give you Steemit eyecandy, does it? We photographers all love the links to where our work can be licensed, or purchased if it is art!
Of course, if you have around $10,000 dollars to spare, you could do what we call a buyout and purchase all rights to the image. You would then, and only then, own the copyright and the right to do what you want with the image. The photographer or artist would have sold the copyright to you!
Recently I saw someone arguing that he had purchased an image for $11.99 and it was his to do what he wanted with! That is such bad information, and an example of someone not bothering to read the licensing contract. (You do not get a copyright buyout for $11.99.) Even with a pretty expensive image license, there are still very strict guidelines about how an image can be used. He had not purchased the image or the rights. He had licensed it.
It's like paying rent. If you live in an apartment and pay rent; you do not own it. If you stay in a hotel while on vacation, you don't buy the room; you pay for the use of it under certain conditions!
Also, if you use an image with people, you can be sued by the people in the image. They may not have signed a model release, or they may have signed one with restrictions on how the image can be used.
Even a stock image with no people in it may have a restriction on its usage. Some company may have licensed the image under the understanding that no one else could use the image for a certain period of time! How are you to know that, if you simply take an image off the web?
I know there are lots of great people here on Steemit, and most simply don't understand what a stock image is, or why it has to paid for just like a hotel room or a rented car. There are other means of acquiring images for your posts, but I will cover that in another blog!
I hear arguments that by wanting to enforce copyright, I'm taking away rights from those who wish to steal my work and use it without paying me for the use. Really? Do I have rights? What about my fellow photographers? Do they have rights? What about bloggers? May I steal your fantastic article without paying you anything, please? Get the picture? It's wrong! And I will not do it! :-) I respect your right to provide original content and be rewarded for it!
I leave you with this thought from William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania: "Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it."
Image © Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
Thanks for taking the time to read this! I appreciate it.
To find my photography and designs on Steemit, please search on #dianemacphoto.
Thank you very, very much for posting this.
You are so welcome! I feel like I have a job to educate, then no-one can say, "I didn't know," if they get sued. I love your designs!
Thank you ^_^
Fact, Upvoted
Thanks @sk2045! I appreciate that!
I read you can use royalty free images, which I believe is the same as stock photography
NO, @lymorgan.Royaly Free does not mean free* it means that once you purchase a license you have unlimited use of the image with certain restrictions, some of which include - no porn, no claiming the image as your own, no reselling the standalone image, no monetary benefit from a blog post etc. etc.
If you purchase the license, you are bound by the usage. Even if you purchase the image, and use it in a a manner that is not allowed, you're in violation of copyright laws. I have both RF and RM images available. If you do happen to use an RM image, that could mean big trouble, because RM means the image is RIGHTS MANAGED and the agency is keeping track of all uses for the image. With RF, they don't keep track of actual usage; they just keep track of the user, and can find out if the image is being used improperly. The reason they have RM is that they don't want two rival companies using the same stock image, as that could lead to big trouble.
One of the book publishers who purchased an RM license of an image of mine for a book cover once paid for the RIGHT to have the image on the book cover and that RIGHT only, but they went ahead and used the image throughout the book without paying for that license. It was probably a mistake by a newbie designer at the company, and they were good clients of Getty, so they worked out something pretty fair with us in in the end!
RECAP : Royalty Free does not mean Free!
Thank you for shedding light on this issue. It's so confusing for so many people, myself included. Your post did a great job of clarifying things and will probably spare people a lot of hassles in the future.
Thank you. Yes, I see a lot of people linking to where they found something on the web, believing that to be the source. Unless it is a photo gallery, stock agency, free photo site or private photographer's collection, it is not the source!Just because someone else used an image (legally or illegally) does not give them the copyright. It is especially true of images with quotes on them. Unless clearly stated, they have no rights to the copyright of that image!
Companies like Hallmark etc. purchase rights to sell products with the images and claim copyright of the product,but they never have rights to the original image.
Hope that helps. I hope to provide a lot of information in small pieces that people can digest. The agencies use web crawlers that crawl the web to find where images are being used. Because Steemit is for profit, it's more important that we are especially vigilant.
Very helpful, thank you so much.
You are welcome. I'm glad you found it useful.
Thanks for your response, I will try to research the images that I use in the future! God Bless You....
God bless you too. It is far better to be safe than sorry later!
In the case you don't afford or want to purchase a license to post a picture, you might want to consider freely licensed pictures such as photos from Unsplash (unsplash do-whatever-you-like license) or Pexels (CC0, public domain), and even Flickr, you just choose the license and browse, maybe search for photos allowing commercial use or better yet, search for non-copyrighted works.
Yes, Thanks for that @gamer00. I plan on writing about that, and how to be sure that the images on the free sites are not copies from stock!
Well there are tools if you want to be absolutely sure a photo hasn't been just copied from another source: You can do a reverse image search with Tineye or even Google by just pasting the url (of the picture) in the search box.
Exactly. I've been using Tineye since it came out. Getty was using the professional version and had recommended Tineye to its contribuors. I intend to write about that at some point, but am just giving snippets of information at a time, because there is a lot to digest! As you probably know, you have to b careful how you use it, and not assume things.
I don't need to worry as I shoot my own photos. I also share them gratis for attribution using the Creative Commons. I also strongly advocate that, having been introduced to the idea of 1000 true fans via Cory Doctorow.
Excellent article and an important conversation to have! There is still far to much ignorance surrounding copyright and I fear its self inflicted ignorance. The information IS out there for people to look up.
It also bothers me that somehow people take copyright of music very seriously yet somehow a photographers work they don't. Even musicians blatantly steal photographers' work and see it as no big deal .. (sorry getting a little worked up about this, don't mean to rant).. but really musicians of all people should no better!
There is very real support on here for the written work, I'm discovering! Plagiarism is not tolerated, but photography is fair game! It baffles me! How long does it take and how much has it cost for someone to write a couple of paragraphs? I have also just discovered that everything on here is searchable on Google! I thought that somehow, this was Private! I have no idea why I thought that, but it changes a lot of things! That means that artists and agencies are going to find the violations eventually, and they will see that it it shows how much someone is making off of their work!
"That means that artists and agencies are going to find the violations eventually, and they will see that it it shows how much someone is making off of their work!"
THIS.
Yeah that will happen eventually. I did notice that there is some policing on photos here. I came across a post that was rated so low that the whole post was hidden.. so i took a look and it turned out someone there tried to pass off someone else's photos as their own. When they couldn't prove they were the photographer the curator/moderator lowered their rep score to the point where their entire account was hidden.
But yes, I think a lot of people here just lift images from the web thinking its fine. I have encountered a lot of posts already that are just people posting pics they like and stating underneath 'this is not mine, don't know who it does belong to, tell me if you know so i can credit them'. Which to me is just as bad.
Just saw this reply. I agree. Most people really don't see anything wrong with it. They are so bombarded with imagery, that they have no idea that just taking what they see is plain wrong. The newbies can maybe be excused one time, but if the big shots are doing it, it makes it harder to enforce. I just read an article about a blogger who ended up settling out of court for $7,500 for unauthorized use of an image. I don't know why some people are so blasé about it when it's only a matter of time before something happens on here! Some people are taking images from rather high profile photographers out there!
I've already run across a few accounts that do that. I've even seen someone quite blatantly post someone else's youtube tutorial video as though it was their own. People will suffer a backlash for it eventually. The best thing to do i think is to try and just educate people about it as much as possible.
Right! And I think we photographers need to be united in making sure people are educated about it. There are some places on chat where you can report abuse. There is a channel called steemcleaners--linkdrop where you can provide links to plagiarism and scams etc. Unfortunately, so far they will not do anything about copyright violation, only plagiarism. so, if someone uses a photo without attribution to the photographer, it is looked upon as plagiarism.
That's good to know, I'm going to look that channel up!
I thought a "commercial" license means you can use it for a blog post that may profit.
I know "Royalty-free" images do not mean that you can use it for profit, but I am under the impression that "commercial" does. Is this true?
I have over 6,000 images on various stock agencies, but I have never purchased or used anyone else's content. I'm @dropthepress, everywhere.