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| Source: Mike Seyfang via Flickr, CC license |
As a reader, I love blogs with simple design and pictures.
I think it’s more enjoyable to read. And as a writer, I always use some images
to make my blog looks attractive. After reading the post, I kept asking myself: Have I ever given proper
attention to the images I am using? Is it copyrighted? Is it royalty-free?
The answer is NO.
Yes, I always put the link from where I got the images but
nothing more. I then spent my afternoon googling about this particular topic. I
realized that many bloggers decided to use disclaimer such as: “this blog
claims no credit…” and so forth. Oh okay then, I thought, as long as I put this
and reference my sources then I'll be fine. But wait… apparently NO! Disclaimer
or citing the sources are not enough to protect us from being sued by the
copyright holders. One blogger shared her experience on being sued and I
captured some parts of her post (full article here).
Quite scary, right? I believe the lines between public domain and intellectual property rights are getting blurred when it comes to Web 2.0 and any of us could have done such mistakes simply because of not knowing the dos and the don’ts. What do you think? To what extent should we respect others intellectual properties – particularly for non-commercial reuse? Are we being too ignorant and disrespectful toward other creators all this time?
Nadia,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post and the specific example of someone who got caught. Copyright should be the FIRST thing we discuss in digital production and ethics, not an after thought. We need an educated and ethical society.
Yes, scary! Tons of great resources are available all the time and "copy and paste" is very easy thing to do in this online world. Often we just forget the fact that though people share their works online but most their works are protected by copyright. We should get their permission before using them. Have you checked Michelle's blog? Michelle also discuss the copyright issue in her blog post, here http://leaderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2015/07/pictures-in-blogs-is-it-okay.html#comment-form
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, Nadia!
Yes, Jiyae. It was her post that motivated me to find out more about this issue. I linked her post in the beginning of this post, actually. Really interesting for someone who tends to overuse search results on Google Image (me!). :)
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