We recently had a site outage due to a copyright complaint that was not submitted to the site, but directly to our host – who promptly took our site down. Such infractions are taken seriously by hosting companies and not every copyright holder is going to attempt to speak to us first. I just want to remind everyone to be aware of the copyright and trademark issues involved with images. We have never had any issues with content from news agencies or blogs as we link to their sites and give credit. The only issue with news sites typically involves including more than just a small excerpt with your post, but even still we have never had a complaint for that. At least not so long as I have owned this site.
To the best of my memory this is the first ever complaint regarding images in the years since I have been owner of the site.
So I would like to caution you when posting anything that is not a news article: Please ensure that the image you include is free for use. This will typically be necessary for Perspectives or Religion pieces where the image does not come from a linked blog or article. Often this can be accomplished by searching free image sites. One thing that you can do to narrow down your search for usable images is to check off the Creative Commons licenses under Usage Rights in the Tools section of the Images tab in Google Search and then cite from where you took the image. (see image below courtesy of one of my own searches on Google)
Better still, include a link to a news or blog source and use the image from there. That has never resulted in a copyright complaint.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter. You are the content creators that make this site work. I just ask that you please help us ensure that the content we are using is allowed.
- theunknownsleeper
