Photos On the Web Subject To Copyright Protection

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - When website content aggregator BuzzFeed published a story called "The Thirty Funniest Header Faces", a collection of photos taken of soccer players at the moment they headed the ball, one person reading the article made an angry face: the photographer of one of the images used in the article.

After the BuzzFeed article appeared, the picture he took then began appearing all over the web, even though when the photographer put it on his Flickr page, it said "All Rights Reserved".

The photographer has sued Buzzfeed for $3.9 million. Do you have a website on which you put stock photos you got from Google images? Here's when you make your surprised face. Because you could be committing copyright infringement. And not knowing that you're violating a copyright won't protect you from being sued.

New technology lets copyright owners identify unlicensed imagery and then sue the infringer, that is, YOU.

Just because an image is on the internet, it doesn't mean the image is free to use. You may still need the correct license to use it. So either put up only photos you've taken yourself or make sure that you've got the right to put up the photos taken by others or you will be the one with the angry face.