Tips for keeping your blog honest when it comes to copyrights

This post isn't strictly about being a contract attorney. Heck, it has nothing whatsoever to do with being a contract attorney, but it does touch on a nexus between law and blogging: image use.

I bet that some of you with blogs shop around the internet for perfect pictures to illustrate a post and then blithely paste in those images using the handy-dandy picture uploader that comes with your blog. What you may not have realized is that lots of those pictures are copyrighted, especially the ones from the major news outlets.

If you use one of those copyrighted images and you're really lucky, the copyright holder won't notice that you're using that image and will leave you alone. (This happens a lot with small bloggers who function below the radar.) The greater your traffic, though, the smaller your luck will be. If your traffic is sucking up the copyright holder's bandwidth, the copyright holder might simply shut you down. But if you're really unlucky, you may find yourself on the receiving end of a cease and desist order.

So, what's a blogger who doesn't want to violate copyright to do? Simple. Find non-copyrighted images on the internet. Here are three of my favorites sites:

1. Wiki Commons (copyright free images galore)
2. The Best Copyright-Free Photo Libraries (a database of places with copyright free images)
3. U.S. Government Photos and Graphics (an index that leads you to a fairly large number of free government images)

A Google search for "copyright free images" should lead you to other sources.

And of course, you're always free to upload your own images. If you use Blogger, Picasa is the obvious choice for image management, because it will post pictures directly to your blog. I like Picasa anyway, because it is, bar none, the easiest interface I've seen for organizing photos. So, if you want to blog about your recent business trip or family vacation, post those photos with impunity -- although beware that the more photos you upload, the more slowly your site will load when readers come a'callin'.

All in all, steering clear of copyrighted or trademarked material is a very small effort, but the return is that you can blog with a clear conscience and without the constant worry that someone's going to get you.

By the way, while I meant this post to be strictly about images, it occurred to me that it's worth reminding all of you, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, that fair use rules apply to blogs. A lot of people believe that, because material can easily be cut from one site and pasted into another, copyright rules don't apply. Wrong! They do.

Just as I described above, with regard to images, you can get lucky or get in big trouble if you freely borrow someones writing, especially if you do so without attribution. Fortunately, Nolo, the self-help legal site, has a nice little discussion about the fair use doctrine which, for the average blogger, is probably all you need to know. (Indeed, it has lots of nice discussions about copyright issues that may affect bloggers and is, as always, a wonderful resource.)