STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

cc · Marc Jacobs

Question for bloggers re photos

kenzie · Chanel

Legally, you need to link and credit the site. Emailing is also recommended. This is what I always do. Even if you do all of that, they still may want you to take it down, but at least you are abiding by copyright laws.

Here's my process- I save the photo locally, then upload it to my blog and hyperlink it manually. Then credit at the bottom.

ETA: Current copyright laws give full ownership to the person or company who took the picture (unless there is a contract otherwise), so no matter how big (Gap) or small (small boutique) or unofficial (personal site) a picture is, it needs to be credited and linked.

-- Edited by kenzie at 09:56, 2008-08-28

cc · Marc Jacobs

When I said I'm not worried about sites like the Gap I meant in terms of bandwidth. And I would never not give a credit or a link.

Also, my knowledge of copyright law is mainly limited to reproduction and electronic distribution of articles but I thought you weren't supposed to use someone's photographs without permission and that simply providing attribution wasn't enough. I didn't think that posting photos on blogs fell under fair use unless it was a thumbnail or fell under the "sufficiently transformed" category.

Blogger just says "Before you put an image in your blog, realize that some images are protected as intellectual property through copyright. This means that the creator has sole legal rights to their works and may not want you copying and displaying them. If you are unsure whether or not an image is copyrighted, it is best not to risk it."

Anyway, I am not asking for legal advice (I work in a law firm and can ask people there or read books up the wazoo on the topic), I just want to know what other people are doing (legal or not!)

-- Edited by cc at 11:29, 2008-08-28

kenzie · Chanel

Oh, sorry. I must have misinterpreted your question.

Kelly · Hermes

cc wrote:

Anyway, I am not asking for legal advice (I work in a law firm and can ask people there or read books up the wazoo on the topic), I just want to know what other people are doing (legal or not!)

Well, my blog is mainly about me and my life, so most of the pictures I put up there are ones I took myself. Usually when I post a picture from a store or whatever, my blog post talks about that thing and where it's from, so I don't specifically credit anyone with it. Like if I say "I like this J.Crew coat" I figure people will know it's not my picture. And the few times I have used a google image search for a photo, I usually don't credit the photographer. I guess I know that I'm not being entirely legal here. But since like, 2 people read my blog, I'm also not so scared anyone is going to come after me.

But I always save it to my computer and let blogger host it for me. I don't use anyone else's bandwidth.

cc · Marc Jacobs

OK, I've started asking permission from people at smaller websites and so far all have said yes. I guess any free advertising is considered a good thing! I tried finding some of the old movie star photos that I wanted on Getty Images and it would be like $200 a pic to use them so I think I'm just going to use the photos I found on other sites and see if anyone ever asks me to take them down. Same with the Gap, JCrew, etc. although in those cases it's also free advertising so I don't know that they care about these things.

XtinaStyles · Marc Jacobs

I blog and I copy the photo to my site, host it from there and link to the website - not sure of the legalities of it but you can't exactly write for permission when you post 3x a day.

Kelly · Hermes

I totally blanked out when answering this question. I do write for a lingerie blog, but for some reason I rarely think of it as a blog (even though that's what it is!). I feel kinda dumb, because I work on it every day and it should've been more in my mind than my personal blog when answering this question!

We kind of go half and half with asking permission. Half of the time, we just write the articles, post pictures we find online, and then e-mail the company afterwards with a link to the article. Most people are thrilled for the free publicity. In the 2 years the website has been up, I think only one person has ever asked us to take photos down. The other half of the time, we do ask beforehand, especially if we need different shots than their website has (if we need hi-res, or something without writing on top, etc.) Most companies are more than happy to send us everything we want. And a lot of companies have pages full of images, press releases, and information just for the media, so after you contact them and get an account or a password, you can just take whatever you want without asking specifically every time you want to use something. Again, free publicity! But when our pictures go up, if you click on a thumbnail to go to see the bigger version of the picture, our site's logo is on all of those photos. So no one can steal them from us and distribute pictures for which we got permission and they didn't. Does that make sense?

And at the bottom of all of our photo pages, we do have a disclaimer that says to contact us and we'll take down anything if you want us to.