Avoiding Getting Sued As A Vendor

When I first heard of selling ebooks through cb I thought for a vendor that everything regarding your clickbank product had to be 100% legit and not be at risk of any copyright infringement.

However, I have seen, and still see tons of reputable vendors using google images for fake testimonials, etc.

While clearly this is something that can be done I am wondering about the contents inside the book you will be selling. If we take weight loss for example and needed a bunch of pictures for food, exercise demonstrations, etc.

Can you use google images for these?

Common sense tells me that you would get sued up the ass if you used any picture owned by a company for their own commercial intent. However, there are a lot of generic pictures thrown up on tons of blogs, (ie, generic exercise poses, a picture of a tomatoe, etc.)

Are these type of images okay to use? Or should you really buy every single image you're going to use from a stock image site?

I actually wrote a short article on preventing a copyright infringement notice in September that mentions the dangers of using copyrighted images from Google images, so you can read it if you want.

I'm not going to describe every legal term concerning copyright infringement, so to sum this up, just because they haven't been sued doesn't mean you will not. While it's unlikely you will get sued for using images created by a simple webmaster such as myself who owns the copyright to those images (although I could sue you if you did take them), there are still larger corporations and wannabe "artists" who will sue you for stealing their content. If you're going to use Google images, at least look for images that are "labelled for reuse".

As for the contents inside the book, it's extremely unlikely that the owners of the images will ever read that particular Clickbank ebook, which is why you don't hear about Clickbank vendors being sued. If you like to exercise precaution like me, either create your own images or use the "labelled for reuse" option in Google Images. I hope this helps.

It is always best to use original content & original images. Then you won't have anything to worry about.

You have to be really careful when using images or graphics that you don't produce yourself. At the same time not everyone has talent for or access to equipment and models in order to create there own. So while you're right that many if not most cb products are not using original artwork, that doesn't mean there's always a copyright infringement involved.

There very well may be infringement in many instances (especially by novices), but there is a whole stock photos industry built around providing the type of images required for other people and companies to use. Some must be purchased and many companies (ex:Getty images) may be aggressive about protecting their copyright interest, but there are a lot of images release into the public domain that have very limited requirements for use (such as non-commercial use only or crediting the artist/author) if any at all.

So, many of the images you're talking about aren't violating any copyright at all. Still others are technically violating someones copyright but it will never become a problem, and then of course there are some that are violating a copyright in which they might run into problems. In the end it's your responsibility to make sure any images aren't protected by copyright (or if they are that you've gotten the legal permission to use them).

Copyright and fair use laws can be complicated and even artists, who of course want protection for our own artwork can run into problems.

You probably already know about the story from a few years ago when Shepard Fairey entered an art contest and his submission was selected by the Obama campaign. In creating the "Hope" poster Fairey had used a reference photo from the Ass. Press which he gave no acknowledgment for and it turned out didn't have the rights to use. There was a big lawsuit over it and Fairey broke a few more laws trying to cover his ass. He ended up with huge fines and was sentenced to probation for his attempted cover-up.

I'd be careful when using Google images. Most of them are copyrighted so if you use them for any commercial use, you may get sued. I see people use Google images and they don't get sued but that's a huge risk. As for the more popular sites regarding a niche, they tend to use free stock images/royalty free images for their blog/site. There's tonnes of sites where you could get free images to use on your site. Just do a quick Google search and you should find one.

To your success,
GothamSEO.

Not sure how you are using the images, but back in March-ish Getty made millions of images free, provided that you embed them on your site.

yeah better to just make sure you have no CR mterial whatsoever ive had several friends get in trouble with CR material