The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.
The U.S. Copyright Office
I’ve been blogging for a while and I am always amazed when a post takes on a life of it’s own. My blog got a little over 3500 hits yesterday. My normal day is about 100 hits or so. Most of them were looking at my Vanessa Anne Hudgens post. I got 230 hits from Xomba on my Kayla Ebbert post. Thanks. Seems he couldn’t find a photo of Kayla and pointed people in my direction. So. . .
Where do you find images online?
Blogging about a photo, without the photo in question, can be a bit frustrating. People might come by for a second to read the post. But really, most of them just want to look at the picture. If you have a copy of that picture, you are likely to be featured in a spot or two. That means some big numbers on your stat counter.
But how do you find that image everyone is looking for and not finding?
Your first thought might be to just use Google Images. That will often get acceptable results for common images. But you are looking for something uncommon, right? Like a nude photo of Vanessa Anne Hudgens. Or maybe a photo of someone that is in the news but has not hit the blogsphere that hard yet, like Setara Qassim.
Ok, the easy route, hit Google Images and see if it is there. If it is, right click and save it and then post it on your blog. If your nice, put a link back to the place where you found it.
The not-so-easy route. Where did you hear about this image? The Today Show? Late Night with David Letterman? CNN? TMZ? Extra? Perez Hilton? The New York Times? They all have websites and they all want traffic. They may have the image posted on their website next to the story. Linking to the story and crediting the big guys is a good idea, even if giving credit isn’t totally covering your ass.
When you Google the topic your looking for, click News next and look at a few stories. The image you want may be there. It may be beyond the first page of results. Dig a little bit.
Then click Google Blogs and check out a few places. Someone else likely has the image on their blog. Again, it would be nice to leave a link to the blog where you find the image. Of course, the odds are good that the blogger found it somewhere else. Still, we all want links, don’t we?
Check out Digg, Newsvine, Technorati, Etc, to find images.
The Hard Way-record everything on TV you think may be of interest at some point and capture a still image to use on your blog. Ok, not all that hard. Easier, download a torrent of the show and capture an image.
Movies, books, CDs and TV shows all have slick images that they want people to see. If your writing a review of something, slapping the cover image next to the blog post shouldn’t bother anyone.
I was not the first person to blog about Vanessa Anne Hudgens or Kayla Ebbert, nor will I the last. But I will get more hits than the people that just post the image and say look at this! Simple SEO-write a post of a few hundred words to go with the image. Google is blind, it can’t see images. It can still read though and it’s the words that matter in page ranking.
For my fifteen seconds of fame, I have the Number One and Number Two spot on Google searches for Vanessa Anne Hudgen Naked. Sigh, if Mom could see me now. . .
To read more about copyrights and the internet visit eFuse.
