Hari's Corner

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Use of images on blogs

Filed under: Internet and Blogging by Hari
Posted on Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 19:57 IST (last updated: Wed, Jul 16, 2008 @ 20:20 IST)

Are you hosting any graphics that you found on the web in a free image hosting account like photobucket or Flickr for use on your blog or personal website? You'd better think again, because you might just be violating their ToS (Terms of Service).

I have now transferred all the images used in my blog articles from Flickr to my own hosting account, thanks to the timely warning issued by Creative Hedgehog. I believe that Flickr only allows you to host photos belonging to you and is not meant for generic website graphics. Fine. I confirmed this with them by e-mail and I immediately took down most of the images I host with Flickr. Now I thought of hosting them on another free image hosting service, photobucket, but I decided to play safe and confirm by e-mail whether I could store images which I don't own the copyright of. In other words, if I write an article on George W. Bush, could I host a picture of him I found somewhere on the web at photobucket for use on my blog? The reply I got was rather cryptic:
If you own the image or have permission from the owner to copy the image, then you can host it here. Otherwise you may be infringing on copyright which is a violation of our Terms of Service.
In other words, if you don't own a picture, you cannot host it at photobucket. But the problem is that, most people tend to use pictures they find on the web for use in their blogs. I can think of situations where "fair use" might come into play, particularly with photos of prominent people like actors, politicians and so on.

From what I have come to understand from my correspondence with photobucket support, suppose I write an article on George W. Bush and want to use a picture of him within the article, I either have to: The first alternative is almost impossible in most situations and the second is a big hassle, particularly because most of these huge website owners might not respond to individual e-mails and secondly it might be hard to ascertain the true copyright holder of many useful images that you find on the web. Therefore complying to the law is next to impossible and so, naturally, most people take the easy way out. All over the web you see thousands of pictures used in websites which just directly link from the original source in question (which amounts to bandwidth stealing) or hosted at photobucket or Flickr or similar image hosting sites (which amounts to a technical breach of copyright). There is a third alternative, by the way, which is to use public domain images, but finding suitable ones for use in context is a more difficult task.

I am yet to understand the full implication of copyright law in such situations. I am entirely willing to attribute the original copyright holder in each instance of such use. However, I have no idea whether such use is (technically) allowed or not under the "fair use" clause. Most of these copyright holders probably couldn't care less either way if you used their images as long as you didn't do so with an intent to steal their work or benefit commercially from them, but unfortunately the image hosting services in question are understandably rather particular about this since they don't want to throw themselves open to any potential litigation since "fair use" is a rather subjective concept which can be contested by Law.

So if you are in the habit of using graphics which don't belong to you and host it on some free image hosting site, then beware, for you run the risk of your account being deleted at any time. To be on the safe side, always credit the original source in question and clarify with your image hosting provider whether such use is permitted or not.

In the meantime, this seems to be a good read on the subject.

6 comment(s)

  1. Luckily (and I'm not even sure why), any images I find on the internet I always put on my website's server. All the ones I take (including screenshots) I tend to put on my Flickr account...But this is a bit outrageous, isn't it? I mean, technically a screenshot of Ubuntu does not belong to me because I am showing something which other people have made and therefore have the rights to. So, I am breaching copyright because my screenshot isn't actually mine and I haven't asked all of the Ubuntu developers if they're alright with it, my Ubuntu screenshot on Flickr risks getting me banned. That's just stupid. Ok, the example was hypothetical and pretty unrealistic, but still - our rights are slowly diminishing...

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on Tue, Feb 14, 2006 @ 20:37 IST #
  2. J_K9, even screenshots aren't permitted by Flickr. It's meant *purely* for photo hosting alone.However, you can host screenshots and miscellaneous graphics which you own at photobucket.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Feb 14, 2006 @ 20:45 IST #
  3. There are three things at issue here:1. The use of other people's sites to host images and their terms of service.2. Potential violation of copyright and what constitutes "fair use."3. Practical steps to obtaining permission to use images / practical ways to enforce copyright protection.If you're using someone else's hosting services for your blog, you should probably follow the site's terms of service. Anything you write personally (unless you have a huge audience or are making money off of it) will probably have little to no impact on the original copyright holder of the image.I'd say if I were an original image holder, these are the things I'd care about:1. That the site referencing my image doesn't get more traffic than the site where the image was taken from.2. The image is actually copied to the new site instead of being hotlinked off my site.3. The image serves only to complement the blog or story and doesn't become the primary attraction. An article about Bush would do fine with or without a Bush photo. A photo of Bush naked would probably be the main attraction over any commentary on the photo.4. Some acknowledgement is given as to where the image comes from.

    Comment by aysiu (visitor) on Tue, Feb 14, 2006 @ 23:08 IST #
  4. You know, it's situations like your scenario that the Creative Commons licenses were created to help out with! When you think about it, the same could be said about quoting another person's blog entry: It can violate copyright. That's partly why I publish my blog & web pages under CC licenses. (In fact, if you go to creativecommons.org & search for "Linux" text, you'll see I'm in the top 10 results list ;) )

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on Wed, Feb 15, 2006 @ 03:18 IST #
  5. Well, the reason I saw as being the main reason why flickr does not allow you to host images for website hosting is for bandwidth reasons: same reason why you shouldn't "hotlink" to other website's graphics.

    Comment by titanium_geek (visitor) on Wed, Feb 15, 2006 @ 05:31 IST #
  6. The main point of concern is the issue of copyright attribution. I'm almost 99% certain that if I attribute the original source, I'm OK with the copyright law under the "fair use" clause. I don't use third-party images for anything other than merely "complementing" my articles. They are definitely not the main attraction.The second is that my e-mail correspondence shows that although technically violating copyright laws, hosting copyright images is *not* a problem since millions of images all over the web are being copied every day. The issue arises really with images which are perceived as "artwork" or such since those kinds are valuable and obviously you need to protect such things.I think copyright is meaningless without a context. Copyright is not all encompassing but only valid when applied to certain contexts. And when the context is missing, the copyright clause becomes next to meaningless.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Wed, Feb 15, 2006 @ 08:26 IST #

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