I am thinking about starting celebrity blog which would contain all hot new images from celebrity's. There are a few very big blogs which doing the same think and they run adsense for 2-3years now without any problems. Can someone tell me more about that subject ? Thanks a lot.
You can purchase rights to celebrity photos from various agencies, but without permission, it's infringement. The photographer or rights holder can demand you pay a usage fee, which can be thousands per image, and you still have to take the images down. Not everyone gets caught, but those that do can lose a lot of money. Perez Hilton spent vasts sums of money on legal fees and now purchases the images he runs. You can also lose your adsense account if it is reported to google, and your host can be forced to take down your site if a DMCA is filed. The search engines will also remove your site from their search results. Only you can decide if it is worth the risk.
Yes, you can do that. I own 5 Fan Sites and been running them for about 2 years. I have use many photographs and images. I added in my disclaimer that we are not affiliate with their agents and the celebrities and I also put that i use the photographs/images under fair copyright law 107 You can check out the law here: http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html So yea
People who claim "fair use" usually lose a lawsuit. If your site is commercial i.e. takes in any type of revenue (adsense, advertising, donations for bandwidth) you do not meet the fair use standard of "nonprofit educational purposes". Don't confuse "never being caught" with being legal.
Well, if one photographer reports you, you can lose your adsense account and all earnings to date. It takes about 5 minutes to file a DMCA and it costs nothing.
What if you just link images from flickr or photobucket since the images weren't uploaded by you but by other people?
It's still infringement if you do not have the copyright holders permission. Even just placing a direct link is illegal "contributory infringement".
Well site will be without any ADS, and mostly I will pick those pictures from forums not from media sites.....
It doesn't matter where you take the pictures from - they aren't yours, and you can't use them without the owners permission. Copying from a forum is even more risky because you don't know where the image originated from. Claiming "fair use" isn't likely to work for a celebrity blog. There are several legal problems with trying to do so. The commercial nature of the site is only one of the "fair use" tests. It doesn't sound like you will be using just a portion of the photographs, but copying the entire photograph. The usage would likely be derivative rather than transformative. You would be providing a direct market substitute that would be harming the copyright owners market. It would also be virtually impossible to argue that this type of usage advances the goal of the copyright. There are several celebrity sites that have been hit will million dollar lawsuits for using celebrity photos without permission. Sure, a small site no one knows about is less likely to be discovered, but that risk increases with the increase in visitors. How small of risk to you want to take on being sued? Some of these celebrity blogs have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in defending a copyright infringement lawsuit. They don't get that money back even if they win. Most of the larger sites pay a usage fee for using these types of photos. Allowing others to steal their image affects their potential income and not all are going to sit back and allow the theft to continue.
Many celebrities can provide you with photos for free, search for they press kits usually available at their websites
Well another thing is that i am from Slovenia and most of celeb sites are from USA ... does that change anything ?
I don't know how Slovenia feels about the theft of someone else's property, but unless your site is very large, I'm sure it would deter some from filing a lawsuit for damages. But, it doesn't matter where you live, or where your images are hosted - it would cost nothing and take about 20 minutes to file a DMCA with your host, google, yahoo, MSN, and any other search engine. Your host would likely remove your account, but the search engines would certainly ban your site and remove it from their index so you wouldn't get any natural traffic.
There should be sites available that will sell you rights to use their celebrity photo sets for a fair price. I can't imagine them charging you a big chunk of money if your site is currently not generating revenue.
The sites don't care how much you make, they will charge you the same whether you make $50 a month or $50 000 a month. I would recommend buying images from gettyimages.com
I have a similar question, so similar that it doesn't warrant a new thread. If you are promoting/reviewing/writing about a product , say an apple mac airbook or a dell xps m1330 laptop. Can you use images from the company site of that product on your site?
technically its illegal but I don't think they will care that much since you giving them an extra publicity. Unless of course you give a negative product review, they may act upon it especially is popular. You can always use photos that were taken by user and ask them if its alright to use it. Most of the time they give you the permission.
Fair use on the Internet A US court case in 2003, Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, provides and develops the relationship between thumbnails, inline linking and fair use. In the lower District Court case on a motion for summary judgment, Arriba Soft was found to have violated copyright without a fair use defense in the use of thumbnail pictures and inline linking from Kelly's website in Arriba's image search engine. That decision was appealed and contested by Internet rights activists such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who argued that it is clearly covered under fair use. On appeal, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the defendant. In reaching its decision, the court utilized the above-mentioned four-factor analysis. First, it found the purpose of creating the thumbnail images as previews to be sufficiently transformative, noting that they were not meant to be viewed at high resolution like the original artwork was. Second, the fact that the photographs had already been published diminished the significance of their nature as creative works. Third, although normally making a "full" replication of a copyrighted work may appear to violate copyright, here it was found to be reasonable and necessary in light of the intended use. Lastly, the court found that the market for the original photographs would not be substantially diminished by the creation of the thumbnails. To the contrary, the thumbnail searches could increase exposure of the originals. In looking at all these factors as a whole, the court found that the thumbnails were fair use and remanded the case to the lower court for trial after issuing a revised opinion on July 7, 2003. The remaining issues were resolved with a default judgment after Arriba Soft had experienced significant financial problems and failed to reach a negotiated settlement.
If you are going to cite his case, cite it correctly based on the facts of the case. 1. He was publishing pictures on his blog before X17 could post them on their site, or in their magazine. Diminishing their value, and costing them money. 2. They asked him to cite, or reference their site when grabbing images directly from their site. He refused. 3. They asked him to stop using their images, since he refused to cite them and their site. He refused and claimed fair use. So his own actions got him in trouble. His issue, or this one anyways (as he had one with his logo, and one with BMG) he was publishing images before the source could get them out costing money. He refused their requests to cite, or remove images. So he did not meet the four principals above. These are vast over simplifications. As in, the absolute worst case scenerio. A DMCA can get you removed from Google, but you have to be the copyright owner, and be able to PROVE IT, plus swear out an affildavit. How do I know this? Because I produce content. Secondly, you can just as easily get RE-included to the index if you remove the offending material, and swear out an affidavit that you removed the offending material, and you waive G from liability. There is a lot of misinformation on the boards, and honestly, you are best researching the subject yourself. Many of the internet esquires are wrong, or it comes down to their "interpretation", not the facts. This is coming from someone with DIRECT experience on both sides of the issue. 2 cents