Blogging Faux-pas; Stealing pictures

Good morning, friends!

Sadly, while bloghopping, it came to my attention that this is very much still happening in the blogosphère .. so it got me thinking of writing about it. It’s important, especially for newbies in the community, to know that this shall not be happening — with some explanations, a bit of reasoning & what you can safely use instead.

Furthermore, you can read Erin’s post about content stolen & what you can do about it if it were to happen to you, aswell as Cait’s post.

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What is considered “stolen pictures”?

First, I wanna tackle what I consider as stolen pictures — to put it simply, it’s everything that you choose to use without proper crediting and consent. There is such things as free to use pictures, but we’ll get to that later.

 

Why does it matter? 

Photography is a skill that takes time, effort and even money. All the props that one might use to make their book pictures attracing, and possibly even the program that they use to place effects and/or filter on it cost money. Think of the person placing their all into the composition and making the picture pleasant to the eye.. only to find someone else using it without consent on their own blog, potentially even getting the credits for it.

Taking and editing your own pictures is a hard practice, Iknow that even myself, I get frustrated with it sometimes — but I believe it is best practice to always use your own pictures, that you took yourself or have a friend take for you. 

I’ve heard of cases where bloggers had taken pictures from google image, and then got sued a huge sum of money from the copyright owner of the picture.. which is absolutely horrible and a unbelievable stressful situation to go through; which can easily be avoided. Not to say that the community will look down to you if you’re known to steal stuff from others, we don’t like that.

 

 

Websites to avoid like the plague, as most of them is stolen content

• Google image
• We Heart it
• Pinterest

 

What to use instead? 

There’s many websites available that has a photo bank of pictures free to use, where you might need to credit the source, but can use in posts/banners/etc. without problem. There’s quite a good range of them; ShutterStock, Freepik, Bigstock, iStock are just some exemples.

 

 

I admit I was once one of them, years ago when I was young & stupid, but with videogame art.. so Iguess I know why one might go that way. But it still breaks my heart to see that it’s still a common practice, and especially among newer in the community. This is not a good way to create a name for yourself; as it will be mostly negative, nobody likes a content stealer.

Again, i’m now super paranoid about this stuff – and especially hearing about that poor blogger who got sued a large sum of money.. so my rule of thumb is always using your own pictures for stuff, my only exceptions being cover pictures of books that I’d take either from Goodread or the author itself if it’s a review request, per exemple.

 

I’d love for all of us to do better, and be mindful of that — I hear alot the “But it’s so pretty- I can’t resist using it!”.. as of which i’d agree, but keep in mind it isn’t yours. You can’t just take something and run with it and use it because it’s on the internet. Iknow i’d be absolutely heart-broken to find my hard worken on pictures being used by someone else!