Copyright Infringement and Website Content
You are surfing the web one evening, catching up on your blog reading perhaps, when you come across a beautiful image. And you think to yourself, “This image would be perfect to demonstrate my new marketing plan on my company website.” Then you do a simple control-click on the image to save it to your hard drive. So far, no harm done.
But once you take that image and insert it onto a page of your company’s website; if you haven’t gotten permission from the creator of the image; you have broken the law.
This happens more than you may realize, primarily because it is so easy to do. Technology allows us to “grab” imagery and other content from web pages. There is no harm in taking an image from someone’s web page and playing with it in a program like Photoshop – on your own computer.
Copyright protects creative work such as writing, music, photographs, and paintings. If you want to use that beautiful image to visually denote your new marketing plan, obtain permission from the image creator. Even if you attribute the image to its creator, if you publish work on your site without the creator’s permission, you may be held liable for copyright infringement.
Using an email program, technology also allows us to communicate easily and quickly with another person, whether they live on the next street over, or the next continent over. So, protect yourself and ask permission.
