I am often asked about the ethical rules to follow and copyright law regarding the use of photos or images found on the web. When it comes to copyright, there are two types. First, a photo you might take of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum does not make you the owner or the holder of the copyright to the Mona Lisa; there is indeed a difference between photographing works of art and photographing public spaces and people. That said, for photos of people and public spaces (buildings, forests, etc.), the person who takes the photo is deemed to be the owner and holds the copyright to that photo until the copyright is sold or transferred to a third party through a licence. This is where things get complicated! Here are the different types of licence:
Royalty Free Picture
The most popular type of photo, because it lets you reuse the image for personal use and commercial use, modify the image, and not cite the author’s source!
- http://fr.freepik.com/ Some photos are royalty free, but not all; check before downloading them.
- https://unsplash.com/ Beautiful photos; you simply need to display the credits
- https://thenounproject.com/ Every icon you could possibly imagine.
- On Google, you can search for royalty-free images. Go to Google www.google.com, run any search, choose “Images”, then click “Search tools” and finally choose “Labeled for reuse with modification”.
Photos requiring credit to the source and author
In this case you must cite the source and the author of the photo.
Non-commercial use photos
Photo for personal use only.
Rights-managed images
When you purchase an image under this type of licence, the image is restricted to a specific use and is often subject to a time limit. For example, if you buy a photo to put in your annual report, the cost will be different than if you put it on the home page of your website.
I don’t know whether the photo has a licence?
By default, all images belong to their author and you cannot use them without their explicit permission. Do not hesitate to write to the photo’s author; chances are that if you ask permission to use their image, they will say yes and/or offer you a way to support their work. How do you find the photo’s author?
- Search Google for your photo’s file name, for example “la_photo.jpg”; this way you will find all the websites that display this image and you may be able to track down the author.
- Every photo has details (title, camera used, resolution, etc.). To find this information, download the image to your computer; on Windows, right-click the file, choose “Properties” and then click the “Details” tab. You may be able to see, in the file’s properties, information that lets you trace the author.
StockPhotos Websites
There are now several sites where you can buy quality, high-resolution photos at widely varying prices, for example:
Note that a new type of “scam” has developed over the past few years. Companies such as GettyImages, which specialize in selling photos online, have invested in specialized search engines. These engines scan every website looking for images they hold the licence to. They run the search based on the name, the unique number of each photo, or by visual recognition. Once they have found a website using their images, they send an email requesting proof of licence. It is therefore very important, when you buy photos on image websites, to keep a copy of the invoice/proof of purchase for all your photos. Do you have questions about copyright and finding photos? Write to us at info@zaa.cc.