I have a comedy blog where I write funny articles. I use pics of various things that are relevant to the subjects I talk about. I don't have pics of all these things at hand so I often run a search and use what ever pic is most appropriate off of google. Is that legal?
do you own it? no. therefore, if the owner of the rights to that picture want to sue you, they can. There's actually a lot of cases where sites like WireImage are suing people without neccessary licensing. However, that's like 1000 sites out of 100+ million websites using. Usually targeting the big earners or high traffic'd i'd presume.
I second charmtolucky, it's best to stay on the safe side, unless your comedy blog gets big you should be good but I'd stay on the safe side, if you have comics especially there may be authors that may not like it, so yeah, it's best to purchase your images rather than using off Google or at least ask the author for permission.
See recent patent trolling. They don't sue anyone unless you've got money. Genrally people are getting more law-aware, your question is good example of that
I advice you not to use those images. You may get a legal letter asking you to pay $1000 per images from GettyImages if they own those images. They keep buying rights of images and sending those letters to settle.
I typically use the Fair use policy. If it shows up on the first page of google and I site the source from where the picture was taken. Then I am covered by the fair use policy. But taking them from personal sites or facebook accounts violates it. But if it shows up in search engines, you can use the fair use policy.
Mind explaining the logic behind that as I am quite interested in where you learnt that. That would be the same as me googling a film name and as long as I found it on the first page on Google, I can use it under fair use. It does not matter where you found an image, it is still copyright to someone. You may be able to use images as fair use under certain conditions but I highly doubt finding it on first page on Google is one of them.
Let me explain that more. What I meant by the first page is. Usually a person is looking for things on google they tend to take whatever is on the first page. In my opinon images and videos on the first page have been exposed on the internet by various outlets. So in truly that image that you got from the site , it may not even be theirs. fair use policy is established for (How do you say: Public sites, Education sits and etc.) Sites that have content that allow you to use the fair use policy as long as you give credit. Now you have to use common sense as for some things you cannot use under fair use, you actually have to get written permission. But for most images under google images. You can just use the fair use policy and call it a day. I have taken many images from searching on google and almost 90% of them can be used on fair use as long as you give credit where credit is due. But in a nutshell you can pretty much tell if you can use the picture under fair use or if your going to need permission to use it. I dont know if I explained it right, but after a while of doing this, you just know what images you can use, those you cannot and how to cite them.
This is nonsense and you would be wise not to try to give legal advice to others when it is clear you do not understand the issue yourself.
The internet is nothing more then a db that collects everything, so unless you own it, then its not yours, unless you were given permission by the owner. The question is; Is someone really going to sue you over a $20 smiley face they they purchased or made? even if the cost was $100, that person may spend 10 times that amount hiring an atty, then you have to prove you own the image, track the other party down, paperwork, court orders, and the person suing has to get an atty in your district, not theirs, then more expenses on top of that, so unless it is a high profile image, on a high profile site then I doubt any lawsuit will come of it...then in the end, they find out you have no money, and have been lots of money getting you to remove their tid-bit image. It is ironic to think someone will get sued for taking some generic image off the net, and if you are asked to remove it, then comply, and find another... If I see an image i like, and it does not have a copyright on the image, I consider fair game, because the image was not marked, and it is not a case they will win... It is very unlikely that any atty would ever take such as case, unless it exceeds $xxx,xxx if it is under a certain amount, then it will fall within civil/small claims court... atty's do not work for free, and unless they think the other party is loaded...because their fees can be in excess of 40%.... Just a thought for the ignorant liberals out there that love slinging the term lawsuit around when they know nothing about the cost or process itself... I will give you an examble; someone stole my article; I am going to sue the bejesus out of him. It is obvious this person knows nothing about anything, and he probably does not have a penny to his name to even consult with an atty that will tell him to piss off.
There are plenty of free stock photo websites to avoid getting into legal troubles. Although, I have been partial to a inurl:istock "keyword" search on Google Images from time to time.
Whenever you use an image make sure to get permission from the owner of the image to avoid copyright and legal issues. It will really help you in the long run if a lawsuit ever gets filed against you. Good luck!
Why would you end up in a lawsuit if you had permission? This is like saying, pay for your dinner as it will help you if you get arrested for stealing it.
It was meant as if they try and file a lawsuit years down the line he can say "Well you gave me permission on _/__/___ to use these images"