You Can Be Sued

[shoaibahmad9999]

Hi,

Normally people use google images to download images and upload on fiverr and other places as profile pictures.

I read this here http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...-4-000-over-using-10-pic-sans-permission.html

So all those downloading pictures from there are in danger ?

 

[ahiddenman]

Yes of course you can get into trouble. But i see lots of people doing it.

Just buy pics from Istock photo. They're cheap enough

 

[Proxy Cake]

Of course because they belong to someone. Take the image and edit it, then it's all good

 

[jamjar919]

I just buy images from Istockphoto or somewhere like that, or use images from wikimedia commons

 

[jamjar919]

Thankyou for the warning!

 

[jenefir]

Y you are saying thanks???...

 

[marketingwise]

if you are not doing anything big do not worry about being sued. If htey contact yo take the pictures down. Think about it. How much money does it make sense to invest into suing you? How would they get the money out of you if they won?
Use the photos that are free.

 

[Baraba]

People do google ganking of my pictures all the time. At the beginning I did not add anything to identify them, so they just took them. Later I started adding logos, watermarks and other stuff, but they still continue to take my pictures. There are many "webmasters" that are lazy enough to just embed my pictures on their websites. The lazy ones that embed are in risk, because I can change my pictures with whatever I want that will appear on their websites. I can put advertisements, adult pictures, or whatever. But the risk did not stop them.
I just learned to live with it - there will be always people who steal pictures, videos, content on the Internet.

 

[Monrox]

Baraba, the thread is about snatching images, not hotlinking them. You can disable hotlinking (embedding) from your host's control panel.

 

[Baraba]

Baraba, the thread is about snatching images, not hotlinking them. You can disable hotlinking (embedding) from your host's control panel.

I have hotlinking disabled from day one and not from the control panel, but from .htaccess file.

Some people embed it and they try to preview and it works on their browser cause its from browser cache. Other fake referrer, or put thumbnail on their website and link the full image to my site.

The hotlink problem is easily avoided with simple javascript as I saw on some websites by looking the logfiles. So, you use the image and you are practically clean because the image is hosted on the copyright holder's website.

 

[crespozooooo]

I don't know if you can be sued for a couple of simple images.
would anyone spend a lot of money in court just for some shitty images that they've worked 5 minutes of their life for?

 

[Orbit143]

I think the chances of actually being sued for stealing images are very low, first thing what any racional guy will do is ask you to delete stolen image, and after that in case you resist he might sue you.

 

[Baraba]

I don't know if you can be sued for a couple of simple images.
would anyone spend a lot of money in court just for some shitty images that they've worked 5 minutes of their life for?

Yes and Yes.
Actually there are companies which leave hot images to be taken from anyone then send cease and desist letters with invoice for lawyer fees. Needless to say these companies are mainly consisting of lawyers.

 

[sunbros]

be carefull buddy you can get in trouble

 

[robertw]

minimum copyright infringement case is $250,000

so unless you are making a quarter mil off these images forget about it!

 

[websitemarketingguru]

What you CAN do is search here: hxxp:// search. creativecommons . org. (change the xxs and remove all the spaces.)

Be sure and read what they have to say, but for the most part anything in there can be used.

Also, Flickr is a good place to look. Not everything can be used, but there are lots that can. Look at the permissions before grabbing, but unless they are marked otherwise, they are all common images.

Another thing to think about is .gov sites. They are public property, and are not copyrighted.

Hope that helps.

 

[nightxowl]

What if you're making money directly from an image, how does that work? I don't mean using an image on a commercial website, but actually taking an image and using it to make money. For example, if an image hasn't been copyrighted, or is allowed for commerical use, can you directly sell that image to others or edit it and claim it as your own and then sell the rights to it?

 

[Sacrilege]

Anyone can sue anyone for anything. It doesn't mean they will win. If it ever gets to court the judge will likely ask why they didn't just file a DMCA complaint. If they were really interested in protecting their copyright on the image, that is the logical route. You can always say you got it from some other site that said it was free, how could you possibly know it was copyrighted if that is the case?

 

[Monrox]

It's up to the user to make sure that the work is not protected. If he can't be sure, then he better not use it; that's the law. A DMCA notice is designed to protect a webmaster from the actions of his users. If the webmaster himself is infringing, he will lose 100%.

The owner may choose to send a C&D, a different thing, or directly go to court. If you are poor you get C&Ds. If not, they go after damages.

 

[Sacrilege]

You're confusing DMCA notice with DMCA complaint. The law gives copyright holders a process to protect their copyrighted work by complaining to the webhost, who then has to pull the image. If a copyright holder goes to court to sue you, it's likely the judge will ask why this process was not used. This is a quick and easy way to protect your copyright that was developed for the express purpose of keeping this shit out of court. So if the image is so valuable, why wouldn't the owner just use this process? If they don't have a good reason it's going to get thrown out.

I can go to court and sue my neighbor if his dog shits on my lawn every day for 4 years straight. But I'm sure someone will ask if at some point I told him that it bothers me and he should stop. Do I really have a case if I didn't go through the logical and customary channel for solving such a problem? Nope. It is what it is, a money grab and a waste of the judge's time.