I am thinking of having a go at starting a blog based on a celebrity, music group, etc. It will just be a hobbie but would also like to eventually make a bit of money out of it also. I have done a bit of keyword research on a few groups and people that I am interested in. My question is, what are the rules with regards to using photos of celebrities, etc on websites? Would i need to have a disclaimer stating where the photo came from? Also, if i based it on a model that had done topless photos, would showing these on the website be classed as porn? Any advice on how best to proceed would be very much appreciated.
Anytime you use a photo that is not yours you need permission to use that photo. All the photos are pretty much copyrighted by someone. Now do people follow the law? No! most celebrity blogs use celebrity photos they find on the internet or off other celeb news blogs and place them on their site. It is risky but i think you would have to worry about it more if your site became huge. Here is the most popular celebrity blog: perezhilton.com He got sued couple of times for copyrighted photos but his site is so big now that he gets people sending him photos and lettimg him use them on his website. Now with posting a topless model pics thats porn 100%. Anything that has nudity will be considered porn. Dont post any naked photos of people if you're using adsense or any other advertising networks.
I would clearly give credit + link to where all of the photographs have come from. Because its a celebrity blog = there's the fair use copyright to which you're protected under as well.