Web Design: Photograph Copyright Issues
When designing a web page, you need to be careful about what
pictures you use. Many people simply grab them off Google - they
see a picture they like, and they put it on their web site.
Unfortunately, copyright law protects the person who took the
picture as the owner - if you're not careful you could end up
facing a lawsuit.
Copyright law gives rights to anyone whose creativity results
in some expression - in the case of photographs, that means the
photographer. If you don't have express permission to use a
picture or image on your site, you ought to be careful about
doing so. Someone, somewhere, probably owns it, and they may not
be too happy if they find it on your site. Many webmasters find
out the hard way - they use hundreds of pictures, straight from
google, without dealing with the owner. They end up facing a
suit, forced to defend it or pay much more money than they made
running their site back to the owner.
It's actually relatively simple to avoid this whole mess. There
are entire web sites designed to sell stock photos for web
design purposes - just go to IstockPhoto or one of the other
sites that sells them for cheap. You'll pay a buck or two, but
you'll be secure knowing your site will never be shut down for
violating the law. That kind of peace of mind is probably going
to be worth a few bucks, and it also means you can know that any
money you make off your web site design will stay in your hands.