Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Do Wordpress sites outrank SquareSpace?
I was a big fan of Wordpress. I used it for 10 years. However, because I run a very small business, the constant upkeep needed on WP in the end started to frustrate me in the end, so I moved to SquareSpace. However, I am beginning to question my decision, as one of my sites is struggling really badly, and I mean badly. The other sites are okay. So I started asking around, and most people are saying there shouldn't be a difference. A few people have said their Wordpress sites always outranks their SquareSpace sites. Then I read what Rand Fishkin said in the below Twitter thread, now I am even more confused. I am very reluctant to move to Wordpress, its just so much hassle. But at the same time, if a site doesn't get much traffic then it's useless. https://twitter.com/drew_pickard/status/991659074134556673 https://twitter.com/randfish/status/991974456477278209 Please let me know your thoughts and experience.
Web Design | | RyanUK0 -
Reasons Why Our Website Pages Randomly Loads Without Content
I know this is not a marketing question but this community is very dev savvy so I'm hoping someone can help me. At random times we're finding that our website pages load without the main body content. The header, footer and navigation loads just fine. If you refresh, it's fine but that's not a solution. Happens on Chrome, IE and Firefox, testing with multiple browser versions Happens across various page types - but seems to be only the main content section/container Happens while on the company network, as well as externally Happens after deleting cookies, temporary internet files and restarting computer We are using a CMS that is virtually unheard of - Bridgeline/Iapps Codebase is .net Our IT/Dev group keeps pushing back, blaming it on cookies or Chrome plugins because they apparently are unable to "recreate the problem". This has been going on for months and it's a terrible experience for the user to have. It's also not great when landing PPC visitors on pages that load with no content. If anyone has ideas as to why this may be happening I would really appreciate it. I'm not sure if links are allowed, by today the issue happened on this page serversdirect.com/dm/geek-biz Linking to an image example below knEUzqd
Web Design | | CliqStudios0 -
Average Time to Conversion on Site
I am curious to know if there is a way to view or calculate the average time it takes site visitors to convert per session. For example, based on a current website design, the average time on site might be 3 minutes and the number of conversions might be 100. is there a way to say that for the current website design, it takes 3 minutes for the average site visitor to submit a web form? Then, as I redesign the site, my goal would be to improve the average time to conversion by making the web form more accessible and require less information within the form itself. I don't think this is currently possible in GA. Has anyone figured out a way to accomplish this by use of traditional tracking tools? Or, am I facing having to code my site to record each visitor's time on site from the second they enter and then stop the clock when they submit the form?
Web Design | | dsinger0 -
Having a second homepage for a site would affect my SEO?
Hello guys, One of our clients is planning to have a new landing page for any users hitting the site for the first time. (returning users will still see the current homepage based on cookies ... in other words, the site would technically have 2 home pages). According to this client, they are planning to do something like this: https://www.websitename.com/ (for returning visitors) https://www.websitename.com/newuser (for first time visitors) Our instinct is that is not great to have 2 home pages (that would affect the SEO campaign we are managing for this company) and we are not sure how to handle this. That's why we would appreciate your opinion regarding this topic: From an SEO perspective, do you think this is a good idea? If not, what would you guys do differentiate first-time visitors vs returning visitors without affecting SEO? Maybe just a pop-up? Thanks in advance for your help !
Web Design | | Robertnweil10 -
What is the best tool to view your page as Googlebot?
Our site was done with asp.net and a lot of scripting. I want to see what Google can see and what it can't. What is the best tool that duplicates Googlebot? I have found several but they seem old or inaccurate.
Web Design | | EcommerceSite0 -
Should the parent directory of the main site-navigation be clickable or not?!?
Highly discussed in our team is the question: Should all parent navigation items be clickable, or only the ones that have no child menu appearing on mouse over? At Starwood Germany, we would like to adjust the main navigation for all our websites in order to improve consistency and user friendliness. At the moment, most of our websites feature both clickable non-clickable parent items, depending on whether the items have a corresponding child menu (appearing on mouse over) or not. See example here: http://www.imperialvienna.com/en Some of our team members believe it might be irritating and/or confusing for the user if some items are clickable while others are not. What do you think? Any thoughts and insights would be truly appreciated!
Web Design | | DFM_GSA0 -
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 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0