I'm sure all of us have heard of copyright laws, which is taken to a whole new level when you (potentially) are earning money.
So I wanted to spend a little time discussing how you can protect yourself (and Steemit) from being asked to take down some content. I'm sure just about everyone here knows how much our community frowns upon plagiarism as well as @cheetah bot who helps protect us from it. How would you feel if someone took your post out of nowhere and started making money off YOUR WORK?!?!
What some Steemians may not know is that this also applies to the pictures we use. While there are a ton of images we can use (commercially) there are just as many that we can not due to their licenses. Even giving a source for the picture changes doesn't change this!
Q: What images are safe for me to use?
What you're looking for are things marked as public domain, creative commons and/or free for reuse licenses. Make sure you look for it to be commercially reusable since there are other licenses that allow use, but not for making money. Some websites that only provide 'free to commercially use' images include:
Pixbay
Pexels
Wikimedia Commons
Wikpedia
Maxpixel
Feel free to mention more sites in the comments.
Q: Can't I just use Google? Some of those other sites make it so hard to search for what I'm looking for.
Why yes...yes you can just use Google. However, to protect yourself, you just want to do a little tweak.
First you'll want to go into a normal Google image search and click the tools button:
This will expand some additional options underneath. Click on the one named Usage rights (which expands into a dropdown menu) and select Labeled for Reuse.
Anything you find under this search can safely be used in your Steemit posts without any concern. I'm sure there's the chance of there being a non-free image that's has its license mislabeled, but that's not your fault.
Q: Do I still need to give a source link to pictures labeled as public domain, creative commons or labeled for reuse?
While some of these licenses state that no attribution is needed (i.e. you don't have to give a link) so of them do. On top of this, here on Steemit those links to an images source is commonly how readers easily know that it's not your own personal photo.
Because of both of these reasons, I tend to recommend being safe and Always leaving a link to where you got a photo from, even if the license says it's not needed. This does also mean a link to the webpage it's on, not to the .jpg (or whatever) itself or to a third party hosting site like imgur.
Q: What about memes? Like the ones with Kermit the Frog...he's surely copyrighted.
Meme's are a bit of a gray area. Usually people remind us that satire or parody pieces often fall under 'fair use,' meme's don't always fall into that category, depending on the judge. Most of the time, it's not even worth the image owners caring to bother with getting a meme taken down. But you can never know for sure.
In the last few years there's actually been a $900 lawsuit filed against a German blog owned by getDigital, that had posted a meme of Socially Awkward Penguin. The image was actually owned by National Geographic with it's rights being handled by Getty Images
The site owners responded to the suit with:
“The Awkward Penguin is not just a random image we stole from Getty’s database, but one of the most well-known Internet memes,” the company protested in its blog post. Said Bastian Krug, the online marketing manager at getDigital: “We have no idea why they chose us.”
-Quote Source
On top of this, the website Know Your Meme keeps a public log of memes and images that have been modified or removed so it could comply with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act.) You can view their full list here.
To sum this up, posting memes for money falls into a gray area. While I'd have to think most the time nothing will come from it, there is no way I can say your guaranteed safe from a 'take down' request.
For further reading on "If Memes are Illegal:"
Do Memes Violate Copyright Law?
How copyright is killing your favorite memes
While I'm sure this wasn't the answer many of you wanted to hear, I'd rather be as accurate as possible. However, if you find an image under a 'free to use' license and make it into you a meme...you ARE safe.
To prevent you from leaving on a down note, here's a copyright safe kitty!!
Feel free to ask me anything. I'm here to Help!
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Image Sources:
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Sleeping Kitty