How to find out that none of the images on my site violates copyrights? Is there any tool that can do this without having to check manually image by image?
-
We plan to add several thousand images to our site and we outsourced the image search to some freelancers who had instructions to just use royalty free pictures.
Is there any easy and quick way to check that in fact none of these images violates copyrights without having to check image by image?
In case there are violations we are unaware of, do you think we need to be concerned about a risk of receiving Takedown Notices (DMCA) before owner giving us notification for giving us opportunity to remove the photo?
-
Keep in mind that infringers post images on their website without any references to licenses. They stole the images, why would they point to a license ? !!
Many of the "free image sources" on the web contain a significant number of infringing images. Furthermore, many of the websites that sell or license images are offering images that they have no right to offer. I have found my own images on such sites and have done something about it.
On many of the free image websites and some of the websites selling images the images are uploaded by "members". The owners of these sites simply claim "safe harbor" when infringing images are found on their sites. They simply blame the member and take the images down when someone complains.
I am not an attorney, but I can say that I would not use your proposed method because a lot of the images that you think are OK are not OK. Furthermore, the images to which I hold copyright do not have licensing information posted with them because they are not available for license by anyone at any price. They are for my exclusive use.
People who are serious about protecting their images from infringement will probably do at least two of the following if they see their images on your website.... DMCA to search engines, DMCA to hosting services, complaint to Adsense, complaint to other revenue sources, send informal notice to you, demand payment for your past use, add your website to the list that their legal team will look into.
It might be a good idea to make an appointment with an intellectual property attorney and discuss the concepts of copyrights, permissions, licenses, documentation, fair use, safe harbor and how copyright laws vary outside of your home country. I have had these types of meetings with more than one attorney and found that it is not as expensive as you might fear. After that meeting you have a person who knows you and can be a quick source of assistance if needed. Time and money well spent.
-
After some digging here is what we did finally:
-
researched with tineye.com whether images were from free image sources and that among top results in tineye were no references to licences
-
additionally we uploaded each image to https://www.picscout.com/ which is a site fully owned by getty images and upon upload indicates whether it finds any licencing information for the image. As picscout has some bad reputation for their practice of exortion letters it is probably best to not submit on their site the URL of images on your own site, but rather use their upload function instead.
-
-
Nicely summarised, EGOL.
My bottom line? If you can't definitively prove you have license for the images, you can't use them.
And a business model based on "hoping' that the real rights owner won't hammer you into the ground for the infringement is the proverbial Very Bad Idea.
Paul
-
If your freelancers obtained "royalty free" images then they will likely have a receipt proving that they paid a fee for each image that was granted a royalty free license. If they obtained other forms of license or permission they should have that neatly logged in a spreadsheet or in the form of email messages. That is where I would start with this.
If you don't have any documentation then it is going to be really hard and really costly to go backwards to determine where each image came from and if proper permissions and licenses were obtained. That might cost more than doing the work over again. If I was in this situation, I would start over on this project.
If you are getting into the business of using the images of others then a good education in copyright, fair use, licensing, permissions, and proper documentation is essential. In addition to you having this information and knowledge, anyone who works for you must have it because the problems of infringement will be yours and not theirs. Lots of people run wild and rampant when collecting images for their websites or client websites. They simply don't understand copyright law or the problem with ignorance.
Will people get in touch with you before filing a DMCA or filing a copyright infringement lawsuit? They might or they might not. If they think that your website is run by scofflaw organization with few assets then they will probably just file DMCAs with search engines and hosting companies. They might also file complaints to Adsense and other income sources. Successful DMCA and Adsense complaints will put the infringer out of business. I make lots of these complaints against infringers and have a system in place to do them quickly and efficiently.
If your website appears to be run by a substantive company and the person who's images you infringed is a decent and patient, they might send you an informal infringement notice, give you a chance to fix it, and then file DMCA and income source complaints if you don't respond quickly. Or, they might send you a bill for your past use of the image and a license agreement for use of the image going forward. If you have stolen a lot of their images or you have a person who stands firmly on their intellectual property, they could go straight to a lawsuit or other legal remedy.
The owner of the images enjoys the ability to chose their methods of dealing with you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?
So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant. I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with: REVIEW CONTENT We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following: REVIEW TITLE REVIEW Written by: CUSTOMER NAME Type of Service:House Removal Date published: DATE PUBLISHED 10 / 10 stars I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?
Web Design | | BearPaw881 -
Does anyone know of an easy way to create jump links in WordPress without having to hardcode it into the HTML?
I am using Genesis Framework with the New Pro child theme on my site called Learn Internet Grow and when I create long articles I like to have a menu so readers can jump to a specific section. I wonder if there is a best practice for how to create jump links quickly without having to switch between the code editor and the post editor. There are a bunch of plugins but I am wary of adding more. Maybe if someone can tell me about one they had a good experience with. Ideally, a resource that shows you how to create a custom plugin for this or a non-plugin way to alter the framework to enable easy jump linking.
Web Design | | LearnInternetGrow0 -
Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers
Hi, Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers on same url. The content of the site will also be different on different browsers. Will it be treated as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site has same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Can only get a few pages indexed on by google
Hi I've touched upon this before on previous questions so apologies for repeating myself. In a nutshell out of the 60 webpages submitted to Google 11 have been indexed and out of the 140 images submitted none have indexed any ideas would be great! Here is a screen shot of what Google Webmaster is showing http://www.tidy-books.com/sitemapshow.png and here is the sitemap - > http://www.tidy-books.com/sitemap/us/sitemap.xml Thanks
Web Design | | tidybooks0 -
How can i embed my video into a table using SEO embed setting?
We use Wistia.com to embed our videos. They have different options for embed settings and we prefer to use the SEO embed setting, however, when we use that setting we aren't able to insert the video in a table side by side with another image or text. When we try, the video jumps out of the table and the table gets (for lack of a better work) out of wack. When we embed the video with the iframe embed setting, the video can be placed in a table with no issues, but then we don't get the SEO credit. We have our site in wordpress. I'm not sure if that has something to do with the tables getting messed up. Check out this link to see an example of how we want the video to show up. http://www.3000doorhangers.com/ Any suggestions as to how we can use the SEO embed setting within a table as shown in the above link?
Web Design | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Given the lastest Google update, should I rewrite my Flash site or try to present an alternative HTML/CSS site?
I have a site that was created using Flash. The reasoning behind this was, at the time, that I didn't care if the site ranked or not (portfolio site). Now I would like to drive traffic to the site from SE's. Given the Penguin update, should I rewrite my Flash site in HTML/CSS or present an alternative site for bots and browsers that don't support Flash? My concern is that by presenting an alternative site to bots and non Flash supporting browsers that the SE's will see potentially see this as cloaking. Thoughts and advice would be much appreciated.
Web Design | | mj7750 -
Footer backlinks for sites I've developed
I link back to my website via my company name on the footers of sites I develop. Lately I've been changing this to my keyword and mixing and matching. This has been done for new sites I create and old sites I've not seen any benefit so far after a couple of months. Most my clients are hosted on the same server as my main site that it links back to. 1. Is this a bad idea to link back on the same IP?
Web Design | | sanchez1960
2. Is footer backlinks to the main developer going to annoy Google?
3. Should I change my main site's server, will it help? All my competitors seem to do it and as far as I can tell they seem to get better results than I do. Because I'm now changing them the reason I see no benefit? Thanks0 -
I have a button that repeats it self many times on same page, what can i do so button name does not affect my SEO?
I have a shopping car button named "Add to car" but it repeats on many pages on my website, is this affecting my seo? If yes.. What should i do so it does not affect? Should button appear on hover? Thanks
Web Design | | SeMeAntoja0