Using illegal images and content on blogs and social media. You are breaking the Law. Can result in fines and a lawsuit! - Social Media Management, PR Media, Publishing, Creative Digital Marketing

📸 Photos and social media.

Using illegal images and text from the Internet on blogs and social media can result in huge fines!

I run a very successful social media company and a large part of our budget is reserved for payment of stock photography subscriptions. Do you see that red copyright violation image above? You got it! We paid for it.

We blog for very high profile businesses. Our clients are Real Estate professionals, Title Companies, Lawyers, Insurance companies etc… Can you just image a takedown notice being issued to the company and get a huge fine imposed, or a lawsuit filed against them due to our negligence of the law?

The majority of Internet users believe that an image in Google is there for free using. Nothing could be further from the truth. Google images are an indexing system to keep record of all images across the web. The fact is an Image would not be in Google images if someone has not placed it on a website, blog or other Internet site.

Every creation is copyrighted by default. If in doubt whether or not you can use it, ask the creator. If you cannot identify the copyright owner, better don’t use the material.

Why does everyone keep saying there is an exception called “Fair Use.” I teach social media at UCF, University of Central Florida and I brought this topic up. I was shocked to hear the college students say they believe under the “Fair Use” law they are able to use images they find on the web. Many people do not know what Fair Use means.

Let’s jut briefly mention using the text or information from a website and posting the content on your bog or website. News stories, photos, and other online content often show up in multiple places, and most of the time no one has any idea where the content originated. At first glance, it may seem as if it’s perfectly legal to copy content from a website. But is it? The short answer to this question is “NO,” unless you’ve obtained the author’s permission.

When I have clients send me a Word document with content I can tell right away it is copied. It takes me about 5 minutes to find the original copyrights article online. We send it back to the client refusing to post unless we use the link to the original work. We will not risk our company playing with plagiarism and we don’t want our clients in trouble for having copyright infringements on their blogs and sites.

Back to the discussion about images. Here is the truth about Fair Use. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-illegal-to-download-images-off-of-Google-images-Is-this-copyright-infringement-if-its-just-for-personal-use

Here are the legal terms from Google on using Google images.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/29508?vid=0-946871023751-1509060738284

Here are additional resource on Google permissions

https://www.google.com/permissions/faq.html

How using Google Images can cost you $8,000. Use images you know you have permission to use in your blog posts or you could end up getting hit with a lawsuit. https://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/47071.aspx#

Resources to Help You Avoid Litigation When Posting Images in Social Media http://new.mybusinesspresence.com/posting-images-in-social-media/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost

This article discusses the copyright implications of using images found through an online search engine such as Google. In general, you should assume that all images you want to use are protected by copyright unless and until you find out otherwise.

http://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-law-using-images-and-photos-from-google/