Do you share images from the internet?

I ran across an interesting thread today while reading some articles online.  Someone had gone to google images and downloaded some photos and used them on their page, without contacting nor giving credit to the copyright owner.  This person feels that because the images were online, they were free for the taking.

This is not the case.

When a photographer captures your image, at that exact moment they own a copyright to that photo which defines it as their work and their image.  The copyright protects the one who photographed the image from having their work stolen and passed off or even sold as someone else's work.  It doesn't matter if the image is of you or your child, it still belongs to the one who took the photo.  It is illegal to take a photo from the internet without the permission of the copyright holder.

This includes Facebook.

Many photographers, like me, watermark their images to attempt to protect their copyright, but this doesn't always work out since many people think it's ok to crop the watermark out of the image.  It isn't ok!   It is actually illegal for anyone other than the copyright owner to copy, print, save, download, share, or alter in any way any image that belongs to them, without express permission. It doesn't matter if the photo is of you or not.

Now you may be thinking that if the photo is on the internet, you probably won't get caught.  Well, let me tell you a little secret. :)  Photographers have actually begun to implement ways to embed their information in the photo itself.  This is something you can't see, but we can!  It's actually part of the photo. And we can search for that information with web crawlers to find out if someone is using our images illegally.  Unfortunately once the image is posted to the internet, it shows up all over google, and we are unable to control that. This is why watermarking and embedding our copyright information into the photo is so important to us.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. If you purchase a photo from the internet,  or you download a free photo that is royalty free, those are fine to share.  Those photos usually specify that they can be downloaded and used to a certain extent.  Facebook can be ok as well, if the photographer says to feel free to share or tag yourself in the photo, you can.  That does not give you permission to alter the photo though!  Something to keep in mind.

So the next time you see a photo on Facebook and you feel like saving it to your pictures without contacting the photographer and being granted permission, you are actually breaking the law.  You can be sued and the penalties are quite hefty... up to $150,000 per image.   I know I wouldn't want to be sued for stealing!

So if you see a nice picture in the future and you'd like to share it, or tag yourself in it on Facebook, just ask the photographer if you can share their image. Many times they'll say yes. We love for people to see our work, we just want the credit for it!