Image copywrite law?

Question

A friend of mine had a website designed, images used in his website were subsequently found to be subject to copywrite and the image library has sent him an invoice, is he liable when the images were sourced free on internet image pages on google.

Answer 1

Yes - it doesn't matter where you get the images, if they have a copyright and you use them you are in violation of copyright law. If your friend takes the images off his site and also did not make any money using that site and those images he may be able to contest paying a fee. Generally though, it's best to create your own images to avoid copyright infringement.

Answer 2

It all depends on the images that he used.



If he just downloaded 'previews' of images from recognised libraries such as Getty Images, then he is still liable to pay for the images.



The best advice I could offer you is to have a look at the image libraries terms and conditions.



In general, you have to be extremely careful when using images from the internet for business use and should check who the copyright belongs to. If your friend paid to have this website designed by a professional company, only for this image copyright issue to crop up I would be extremely annoyed! They should have recognised this and factored this into the costs!

Answer 3

Yes, he is liable 100%.



I find copyright laws are far too restrictive and lengthy that I feel it infringes on freedom of expression.



Example:

I am putting a documentary together. I found some images that were 50 years old. I contacted Getty Images to use them and was told the cost was $1,000 per image.



That pizzzed me off so much that on my personal web site I have declared, with some limitations, part of the public domain. 2500 images.



http://www.pbase.com/sailingjim



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Here is what he can do, and I understand it's legal. Send an email, tell them the web site address. Tell them you would like to use an image. Tell them to respond it 30 days, if they don't, that you consider it permission given. Save a copy of the email with all headers and if they come back, send them a copy of it. Don't take what I say verbatim, but I've heard in many instances that is all that is needed.



In the mean time, he pull the image, then write them an apologize and see if that is all that is needed.

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Peace



Jim



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Answer 4

The copyrights are normally with the sites that use the images or the photographer, so the person in the photograph normally dosent matter. You need to take permission from the owner (Magazine, website, photographer .. ) before use.