I read about a young woman today in the Washington Post who had posted her picture with a friend on Yahoo’s Flickr. The photo was in turn used by Virgin in a text messaging ad without her consent. Her friend was cropped out, but clearly her image was used. Well that’s a law suit right there! The parents say that they are suing.
I have blogged about this before, but it needs repeating – Everything on the Web is copyrighted by someone! You can not just right click a picture and use it on a commercial website. In some cases you can use images that you find on the Web for personal use, but never oh never for a commercial use. You are just setting yourself up for a suit when you do that. The bigger company are the more you will be a target and so need to stay squeaky clean on that issue.
There are some terrific photo sites where you can buy a one time one use image for as low as $1 so there is just no excuse for snatching photos from Google images, from someone else’s website, or from a place like Flickr.