Hello, I own a popular fansite and the celebrity I'm representing gets a lot of photos from Splash News. So when I hosted the photos on my server and on my main domain.com I got an e-mail from them asking me to remove them and so I did. I was wondering now whether I could create another domain for example domaingallery.com and add a coopermine gallery to this domain separately. I would then upload the photos to this website and link to them from my main domain. I've seen someone else in this niche do the same thing and even though a Splash News rep told me they will e-mail them as well they are still displaying the pictures with no proper licensing and is therefore undercutting me as I can't display them. He/ she is also very careful hosting the thumbnails of the images hosted on domaingallery.com on tinypic so no image is hosted on the primary website. How come the owner of this site doesn't get in trouble with dispaying the photos on the domaingallery.com website? Can an offshore server in another country or so be used for stuff like this?
Hosting on another domain is still illegal. Even linking to copyright material can get you sued for contributory infringement. Just be thankful they only asked you to remove the photos. They could have sued you for a usage fee of thousands of dollars per image and still made you remove them.
Right, but then how can this site get away with it?? I talked with a SplashNews rep about that site in particular and they said they will e-mail them.. this was about 5 months ago and they still decide to post these pictures, therefore stealing all my audience. Is there anything I can do?
Lot's of people steal - not everyone gets caught - but it doesn't make it legal for you to steal photos owned by someone else. You can't do anything about another site if you don't own the photographs. Some photographers/sites license their photos for use on other sites for a fee or other conditions. It's up to the owner of the photographer to say who can and who can't use the photos, and who they will or won't go after. If you use other people's photos without your permission, you assume a legal risk. Maybe there is only a small chance you will be caught or sued. You have to decide if it is worth the risk. A copyright holder can also file a DMCA with google or any other search engine to get your site removed from a search engine. It's also against the adsense TOS to use photos without permission, so you also risk losing your adsense account.
You can get away with it by being sneaky. There is an automatic copyright on images as soon as you take them, so you will need to have luck on your side not to be caught, but it is still illegal...
I always wondered about photo usage because there are a gazillion celebrity blogs out there and i know the majority don't pay for their pictures. A asked a rep from a big photo agency how much one med size picture would cost and he quoated me 150.00 and he was just being fair with that price, i could tell otherwise the price would be higher. I think for the most part these blogs find a way around it. I know up until about two years ago most didn't cite their source. Now i see blogs credit Getty, Splash, Bauer. I think as long as you credit as well as following other guidelines they won't bother you. The ones i notice they go after don't credit them as the source.
Crediting the source doesn't mean you are safe. Not by any stretch of imagination. As Mjewel rightly pointed out, it is up to the copyright holder to decide what action he wants to take. Flickr and Wiki commons are two good places to search for copyright free photos. Be sure to check the license under which they are published.
Okay... Here is some info from a Photographer's point of view (I'm not legal - you should consult a lawyer for your situation). 1. As soon as I take the picture I own the copyright. 2. Since I own the copyright you CAN NOT USE IT LEGALLY WITHOUT MY PERMISSION, period. If I grant a creative commons license or free to use license then you can, but you must work within the terms of the agreement for use. 2a - Just because someone else is using it or you got it from them means nothing. Many give out free images but make sure you got the photograph from the source. 3. If you use an image that is copyrighted or use it without adhering to the creative commons' rules for that photo its a statutory offense! 4. What is a statutory offense? Well its basically a set fee if your found guilty which goes to the copyright holder. What is that fee? $25,000 each offense, or $50,000 if the worked is mentioned as being copyrighted somewhere (or they send you a letter informing you of the copyright infringement and you ignore it). You can be sued for more if the copyright holder lost out on money because you misused his copyrighted work. 5. What does that mean? Don't use images that don't belong to you. You may get away with it 99% of the time, but that 1% is going to cost you (also add lawyer fees, yikes)! 6. If you host the image off-shore then you get into a bit more complication, copyrights need to be registered in some jurisdictions before you can sue, but if someone is using your image the $60 charge is nothing. 7. Another consideration - happens several times a year - some photographer notes that one of his images is stolen and it gets picked up by mainstream photo forums like Flickr, Pbase, Smug, Nikonians etc. Your site will be swarmed and will go down because of all the photographer's checking it out. You will incur high internet fees and not one of these visitor's will but your items, but they can hit the reload page a couple of times each for good measure. It happens and its not pretty, then you served by the photographer. Long Story short - don't use images you don't have the right for - its easier to pay for safety then dance in the flames. And I can't remember what the statutory limit is copyright length (I think its 75 years past your death, or 75 years if corporation) or on suing for misuse. So it could come back to haunt you later.
Wow, supposedly someone filed a DMCA against me before, because I uploaded a few of their "personal" images to one of my blogs / sites. But was asked to remove them and did. I never was contacted from any DMCA site or what-not, nor actually KNEW this "claim" was filed or whatever. Maybe it was just a "scare tactic" by that person that owned the images, I'm not sure. And also thankful nothing serious transpired from it all either. I guess you really have to watch yourselves these days.
dont take risks even if you host in offcountry server. Why not pay for usage rights and be with peace of mind? There are plenty of stock photo sites offer photos for web usage. Try www.istockphoto.com