Hi everyone,
I wanted to make one quick reminder to everybody, since in checking some sites to offer help with issues as time permits, I see an awful lot of “theft of intellectual property” going on. Remember, stealing images and text from other websites is a violation of the IP rights of the original content creators, whether it’s a photographer, writer, or company promoting something on their own website.
Beyond DMCA, and general code of ethics in publishing, it’s just plain wrong. Obviously if you’re in a country which is well known for general thievery and no recourse for affected content creators, you might not care.
Be aware, however, that Google does allow a mechanism to “bury” content sites which duplicate content from other sources without permission or licensing of a photo for commercial purposes (if you run ads on your website, it’s a commercial venture). So, if you copy photos and text from site A, that site can now file a ticket with Google to lower your site ranking/page rank for that duplicate content which you didn’t create.
Google can also penalize your site for “low quality content” (meaning if your mix is 90% copied content, and 10% original – it’s considered low quality site).
A photographer who has copyrighted an image and licensed it to a news site (such as AP or other) can claim damages for your use without having to prove damages (again, presuming your country even respects copyright law).
Please keep this in mind when copying images, text, or other elements from websites when you didn’t create the images or content.
Please respect the work of others.
