Does Steemit count as commercial usage of content?
Does Steemit count as commercial usage of content?
Content creators on the Steem blockchain seem to have a fixation with fair image usage, and I get it: if we use an image that we don't necessarily have the rights to use, we are making money off someone else's copyrighted material. Is it fair? The answer is normally no.
But Steem is not only a commercial blogging platform. It's a social network, like Twitter, like Facebook, like Reddit. Those platforms, however, don't have a focus on content creation but on content sharing. Steem, on the other hand, seems to be all about originality.
How should it be done?
I myself have been bashed before for using unattributed pictures. And, well, what other choice did I have? I could have:
- Not used it
- Struggled to find the source
- Go the lazy way and just put it in my post
In one occasion, I tried number 2. I really did, for hours, and found nothing. The image (in this post) may have been more than 10 years old, the original author lost in oblivion, covered by thousands of unattributed usages.
I could have gone for choice n° 1 and just looked for another image, but the story was inspired by that image and I felt that using another one would be counter-intuitive. I'm sure that there are many cute puppers on Pixabay, free images, etc., but the more I thought about it, the more I thought:
We're just overthinking this.
The nature of the Steem blockchain
This is not a newspaper or Wikipedia. This is my personal blog, much like I would post random stories on Reddit or Facebook, much like I would share funny pictures on Pinterest or 9gag. The only difference, of course, is that I'm making money off of everything I post, so let's go back to the first question:
Does Steem count as commercial usage?
I'm not selling my content or claiming authorship or ownership over any image. I'm just using them as illustrations to funny texts that I write and share, much like this one. I do care about attribution, and as often as possible I'll link the author, but what if I can't find the author?
- Should I just not use the images in those cases?
- Should I limit my creativity and delete texts that need the support of copyrighted images that I don't have the right to use?
- And beyond all of this, why should my personal blog be regulated by the same laws as encyclopaedias, books and magazines? It's just my tiny hub, after all, where in any other site I'd just post collages and memes without thinking that I may be "violating" an author's rights (harsh word, ain't it? For a personal blog...)
What do you think? Leave a vote and a comment below
Copyright laws protect an artist's ability to profit from what has been created. By saying they are "outdated" I don't exactly know what you mean. Different societies have respected copyrights to different degrees over the years. What I do know is that weak copyright laws result in lower quality content overall as a practical matter.
If a content creator cannot depend on strong copyright laws, the incentive to create content is reduced. Think of it from a musician's point of view. If I'm 20 years old and I consider myself capable of making really good music, I have a decision to make. Do I want to embark on a career as a musician or is it time for me to start working 9-5 in an office job? The office job is basically a guaranteed career but in order to succeed it requires me to give up on going at music full-time. Sure I can do music in my "spare time" but that is a hobby. If you want the smartest and best to go into music and create the very best music to entertain you, there has to be a great incentive for them to do that. You want guys like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, incredibly talented and smart musicians, to decide as individuals that music is worth the risk they are taking by NOT taking a normal career path.
Right now, I agree that the copyright is to some extent treated as "outdated" by many people because of the issues you raised. But in the end, the less people respect the idea of copyright, the lower the quality of the content that will be produced. These days because of online "sharing" of music digitally on services like soundcloud and spotify, musicians make far less money than they did back in the days when the only way to get music was to buy it at a record store. Now there are very well-known bands that are only scraping by as a result. This is a well-known phenomenon in the music business.
What effect will this have? Unless something changes, smart and talented musicians are increasingly going to choose not to risk their own futures on music simply because the risk vs reward does not add up. If you want brilliant people to risk their futures on art, you have to guarantee their ability to profit from what they make. There is no way around that. In the end it's just math, and it applies equally to all types of material, from fiction to music to photos to paintings, to whatever else.
if a creator, innovator, discoverer, manufacturer cannot look to ownership in whole or in part yes then some will lose incentive though some will not. Goals and motivation aren't simple. the question of how to equitably or fairly define the value of a "unit of work" isn't straightforward either never has been. the visionaries push the boundaries of what can or might be done which is of immense value. though as far as actually DOING what has to be done in order to bring any given project to fruition is that only and always just manual labor and not really as notable and so less valuable? Doesn't it involve a great degree of risk and sacrifice? in the minds of many concept to execution it seems is so simple to apportion it is not
no its not just math. what it is is incredible power and great responsibility in regards to not only what is known and tangible but also in regards to potential and possibility. In some ways it is simple in other ways its extremely complex and whats at stake is the entire Gaia system as well as the future of Homo Sapiens. simple is where we start as children being told what is right is good and what is wrong is bad but then we spend most of our lives dealing with and hopefully learning about the most human concerns are in a vast grey are between good/right & wrong/bad.
I am completely with you that all should at very least "respect the idea of copyright". Better still all should ACT in accordance with respect for ownership/rights/attribution/usage & hells yes compensation when comes to certain stuff. Thopugh how? Early 21st century & since the dawn of the internet even strange times anything and everything that can be moved to digital & netwroked & computerized will be. Certain fundamental questions we once asked and thought were answered have to be re-examined and dealt with in new and very different ways there is no shoving the genie back in the bottle
The farther you move away from strong copyright, the less quality you will see in art. That is simply a mathematical fact if averaged over a population. There are outliers of course, people who will spend their lives writing or painting no matter whether they are compensated or not. You'll always have someone like Milton writing Paradise Lost from his prison cell just because. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the overall consequences of failing to legally protect artistic intellectual property. The legal system/society that does not protect copyrights will suffer the loss of creative value in direct proportion because the best minds will tend to apply their talents where they can prosper.
I have this brilliant image, but oh dear, I just don't have the right words to go with it so I think I'll just copy someone's blog. No one will mind, right? LOL! That's how ludicrous this whole argument about taking photography and other art is!
Wow, I didn't know that John Milton had written Paradise Lost from prison! That's really interesting. I'll go check out his Wikipedia article.
I've seen some people who believe that copyright is slavery or something like that, as if, since they didn't "sign" the laws, conventions or even the social contract, they don't affect them, like they're free to do whatever they want. And their argument against copyright is that ownership is an illusion.
I think I debated him for two full days and we wrote together more than 6k words, but in the end, we stopped halfway.
100% agreed, and this is the problem that I see in communism too where, "ideally", everyone works where they will do best for society and they will get as much as they "need". This sounds good until you realise that people are self-interested and we want to work for our own goals and not for the goals established by some super-altruistic authority who believes themselves greater than my free will.
I will always defend the freedom of both the selfish and the generous, against the tyranny of those who think they know better than the rest of the world because of their philosophical views about sharing everything and expecting nothing but appreciation and the means for survival.
I would say to those people that slavery is when you don't get compensated for the work you've done.
Yes, John Milton was a crazy SOB. He was imprisoned for political beliefs when he was like 40 and instead of despairing he spent the rest of his life writing the greatest literature the world has ever seen.
Lol, I need to read his Paradise Lost. I haven't checked it. I was out, just coming back, I'll google him and his works and take a peek.
The fact is you are earning something and may it be fiat or cryptocurrency there was an exchange that happened.
Even if the image is the not the focused and was used to highlight or even just break the text by putting it in a post that garnered crypto or money it was used for commercial gain.
To say that copyright laws are dead and a thing of the past is just plain stupid. So is anyone free to get any image of you and use it to and make money off it. Same way with your stories, what if someone compiled all your fiction and sold it off?
Just because it is in the internet does not mean that it is up for grabs.
I made a post about this a week ago and shows how strong I feel against it.
Imitation maybe the best form of flattery but Plagiarism is not
Here is another article about it
Let's talk about: Copyright
It is hard to find images especially if we want something very specific but it is only that way that we continually help improve the system
I'm not saying that copyright laws are dead. But I think that they should be very strongly improved upon. Right now, they are, from my point of view, obsolete, still living in the era of paper books and paintings. It's controversial, but imagine things like being unable to "copy" something. Copying, on the era of the internet, is within the reach of your right click. You just right click on the image, press copy, then go to Facebook, press paste, and you have a new copy of the content 😂 very pretty and very illegal.
The laws of commerce and copyright are usually defined for exchanges, as you say, but in this case, I'm just blogging about something. Blogs were born from a form of topical diaries. Things like what scientists use to record their progress, or to write about interesting things they see in their midst. Sort of similar to the letters that your dad used to send you.
And on Steem, you get paid. But it's not the users who are paying you, and you're not selling your content, you're not receiving something "in exchange" for it. The money you get here is very different from the money stipulated in copyright laws. And this is where I think that their obsolescence lies. The system here is very complex, but we could say that you are being paid to be here and to participate, regardless of the content. And people vote for you to receive money for your participation.
However, the participation on the Steem blockchain differs from the classical commercial model. I'm sure we could compare both of them and try to pinpoint certain similarities, but in essence, Steem is a social network and money is generated, printed, on this same platform. It's just different and deserves a level of analysis that I'm currently unable to perform. But I think that, at least for the case of my blog and similar blogs, the use given to the pictures shouldn't fall within the "commercial use" category but "personal" or other categories of copyright that perhaps haven't been invented yet for memes and virtual sharing.
Okay so would you decline pay outs for all of your posts from now on?
No, and I don't see how that would make sense? Imagine Steem, as I said on the other comment, like this:
This is not a company or a market, or an art gallery with entry fees. It's just a place where we hang out and the owners of the place have a money printer. We hang out here and it's nice and cozy, and whenever we interact and someone says "Oooh! That's cool!", the owners put some of their specially-made tokens in that person's assigned basket.
We keep walking around, seeing and chatting, and it's just like anywhere else, only that in here, you're getting money every time you walk out. You may show people pictures of your trips, our you may open up an album that you bought somewhere else and show those pictures, like "Hey, there's this Rubikon author that I love, look what he made", and dozens of people stand around you wondering what you're going to share. Then you open it and it's awesome, it's not yours, and you're not authorised to resell it, but people gawk at it and "Oooh" around in awe, and the owners add a little bit more cash to your basket.
And so you get paid for it
Yes, but it's not a commercial exchange. You're not selling the pictures or anything.
I think it's more like sharing and the payment is a secondary effect of the interaction that could not be considered to be commercial use of the content itself.
I see Steem like its own ecosystem. Imagine that what I described is just a group of your friends and, well, you have a money printer for your own currency, and if you're a good citizen, your friends say "my friend is a cool friend" and you get bumped up.
Does that mean that when you're busy being a good citizen, showing your finds in the form of pictures, treasures and stories, you're somehow reselling the content?
So if Steem is its own ecosystem then it shouldn't be bound by universal rights and laws of government? So the work of all spammers and plagiarist that would get a poem, a short story or an image from the internet is okay and since it was just shared and the secondary effect was someone upvoted on it thus giving them cash is okay since there was a money printer.
So the work of Steem cleaners is wrong and they should be called out for flagging and reducing plagiarism because it is just being shared and without the intent to resell and get money? So Steem Cleaners is evil, another form of the government and banksters to limit people and herd them towards staying in line.
No, we also have the right to disagree with rewards, and so we can flag.
My point about the ecosystem wasn't that it is completely independent of the world. What I meant was that this isn't a company or anything like that. It's an ecosystem with forests with leaves made of silver and fruits made of gold, and the fact that you're walking around with an album of pictures that you can't resell doesn't mean that you should't go to the elders and say "I found this cool thing by the river" right before asking for permission to take a tiny fruit that you could sell afterwards.
And I forgot about what you said about Steemcleaners.
I think that this is more a matter of 2 things: ethics and perceived due reward.
We have votes and we have flags. We can use any of them any time we want. I could flag you right now, lol, or upvote you, and it all depends on my personal beliefs. This is my moral standpoint, and communities have ethical standpoints.
(Ethics are community-based while morals are culturally imposed and individual; ethics are like guidelines while morals are beliefs.)
Steemcleaners enforce a view of ethics that they believe in, as everyone has the right to do. And their view is shared by many people, so it's "ok" (it's accepted by the local instance of society). For Steemcleaners, it's bad to share pictures and texts and to imply that you're the owner and maker of them. If you make a text and use an illustrative picture that is very obviously not yours and you don't say that it's yours, then you can be safe from Steemcleaners. And this is "common sense" (it's the ethical view of the local instance of society).
Every community has regulators and authorities. Steem is no exception.
In the Steem design, one of the instances in which people were encouraged to flag others was when they disagreed on the rewards they were getting. If you get 0.02 from copying my post, I can just flag you and you get 0. It's my self-enforcement of the reward system, just as it was designed.
As an artist (among other things) on Steemit, I think that I can answer a few of the questions you have @cryptosharon!
The image for this post is from Pixabay! I've seen it before and it is cc0 (Creative Commons free for commercial use—no attribution). I used to cite these, then went to not doing it. Now I cite my image no matter what (to avoid any type of questioning!)
I've been accused one time of possibly not citing an image, but I did make it from scratch myself and was able to clear it.
I see Steemit as commercial use, because we are getting paid for the content that we present. Cryptocurrency is still currency. But don't fret. I was able to reverse image search the pupper photo and it's actually easy to do!
Any image where you can't find the source, upload it to tineye.com and they will tell you everywhere it was uploaded! Always use the first result for "Best Match" and you are good to go!
In this post I used a bunch of memes and other image content, and cited it all at the bottom of the post. The important thing to remember is that the images (video, pictures) should not be the main focus/ the majority of your content.
To my understanding as long as you are not trying to pass something off as yours when it's not, you are clear <3
Hope this helps!
@shello
The best match is from Weheart it, which is like Pinterest. People share unattributed images. I usually go for "biggest image", but that one is from Reddit and it's not attributed either. The original is probably an unknown Japanese Instagrammer.
D: That is one of my fears and one of the things I dislike about the current conventions on Steemit. Even if the image is CC0 or yours, people accuse you of not "properly" attributing it, while the license actually requires to attribution.
A friend of mine used to do this and tried to get into Qurator. They told him that he was not attributing his images... I think that the moderator was a bit lazy and didn't read the signature. Ever since that happened, he uses H1 titles and exclamation marks to all image attributions to spite that moderator hahahaha
Hmm, I usually see the money as a secondary thing, like an indirect effect of our participation. But it could also be said that our mere participation in the blockchain is commercial activity. 🤔
What I've gathered from your reply is that a lot of people suck xDDD Your friend is hilarious though, although it might feel nice to release anger even passively, doing this type of behavior isn't going to help their situation lmao.
It does work on a lot of images, but many people aren't inclined as much as Steemit to attribute to works, even when they're ours and this sucks sometimes.
The government will accuse a person of tax evasion though as any services that we receive income for is considered a wage. Cryptocurrency is still pretty new though, in some cases it's treated as money, and in others as property.
Right now, I see cryptocurrencies as trading tools, not either just property or money. I can't buy anything with it outside of Steem, for example, so I need to sell my cryptocurrency to get another currency that people want.
It's like a thing we hold to resell later, to hold in here, on Steemit, as stocks, but SBD is what I use the most to pay for bots, so I think that it is the cryptocurrency with the biggest "currency" value right now for me. The others are similar to stocks in day trading that I buy and resell later when the value is higher.
And yeap, people suck and it's hard to do things right when people overcorrect. I don't like having to say "I took this from Pixabay" because Pixabay is CC0. But oh well, people like to be able to confirm the origin of things without having to reverse image search every time they look for curations. Perhaps we can see it as making curators' lives easier.
I exchange my SBD for other coins that I hold, and sometimes I cash it out into USD. Looking at cryptocurrency as a tool is still leagues above giving meaning to paper! Bots are nice and all, but I want everyone to visit my blog to be made aware that you can still succeed without buying them. In a sense helping out newer users not feel pressured, but inspired to work more on their blogs.
It is a shame that we still need to attribute our cc0 images to thwart further investigation, but as you said—it may actually be good to help curators get to more posts!
The fact that if Steemit counts or not as commercial use is somewhat controversial, because here you are not making money, but cryptos. However, the copyright always applies, whether or not generating money with it content, unless the image you are using is explicitly marked as "for noncommercial use".
What I personally do most of the time, is just go to Google Images, press "tools", then "usage rights", and finally in "labeled for reuse". In this way, the images of pages like Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons or Pxhere will also appear.
Well, cryptocurrencies are money in a sense.
Copyright laws, I think that they are outdated, as the top comment on this post explains. Lately, I've been seeing all sorts of arguments for this idea on the platform. But regardless of whether they're outdated or not, copyright laws are usually enforced on commercial use and not personal usage. You can make your own posters and calendars with them, put them on your fridge, call your friends to see something, and as long as you're not using the texts or pictures for commercial usage (selling, re-selling, modifying and then selling, etc.), then you're alright by all laws and moral views I know.
That's why I think that the focus should be on whether Steem counts as commercial use or not. If it does, then there's a lot of strictly and technically illegal stuff on the platform and we should enforce the national laws of... some place... probably the US or our own national countries, on the platform. However, I'm not sure whether this would count as commercial usage, since I'm not selling the content, and as far as I'm concerned, the moneymaking is very much something else other than commercial use of the content.
So, in my own personal view, the Steem blockchain should not be regulated per se by the laws applying to commercial use of content. Instead, it should be regulated by an ethical system like:
I'd agree with this for commercial use, and for the times when you're actively searching for an illustration for your blog posts. I would not be strictly for it since there are probably pictures more competent at illustrating your post that are just not within what commercial-use copyright allows you.
However, many times, like with memes or Facebook posts or such, when you post on the Steem blockchain, you just want to share something or talk about something. It could be, for example, sharing a beautiful picture you saw the other day, taken by a professional photographer, or a poem, or whatever kind of content that you would actually not be allowed to embed if you were not the owner, but only in the sense of commercial use.
If we're to consider that this is just your blog, your personal journal, a tiny board where you paste stuff for your friends to come by on their weekends to check out what you've written or found interesting during the week, then I don't think that we should be limiting ourselves to "only free use images" and the usual plagiarism regulations.
When you're making a homework for a teacher, for example, it's a different kind of thing. You're implicitly claiming that what you're delivering is yours, and it's usually regulated by academic guidelines such as APA's (and other methodologies with quoting regulations that tell you how much of the work can be yours, how to cite authors, etc.). And I've seen authors on Steemit using APA's guidelines to cite works. They apparently, and I don't criticise them for it, think or consider Steemit to be a formal platform and not a mere social network.
Yes, but I don't think that any government will accept Steem to pay taxes, so I don't think they will consider it as money.
I personally am not very in favor of the laws of copyright, because they contradict the free market and the free propagation of ideas, creating barriers to progress, but as far as I know, and I'm not a legal expert, it's that even lending a book, music CD or movie is illegal under copyright, if you print a calendar with someone else's content and put it in your refrigerator, it is also.
What happens is that they are laws of such absurd fulfillment, that nobody will take you to court for doing so. Imagine bringing to trial all people who lend a book, or who use an image of another person on the Internet, or put in a video 30 seconds of a popular song. It would be costly and endless judgments that would not lead anywhere, so usually they don't, although technically, technically, they could do it.
We should also see the jurisprudence of cases, in which many people have infringed copyright, but has been protected by other laws such as property, and have gone unpunished.
Although it is not necessary to complicate so much, the only person that can sue you for copyright is the one that owns it, otherwise, there is not much legal problem with that. I use the images tagged as noncommercial usually, but it is more for myself than for the law, because nobody is going to point fingers at me for that, there are millions, tens of millions of people, who do the same on the Internet every day, so you don't have to worry about that.
You can put the source of the image as a courtesy, if you wish, and to avoid disputes with SJWhales, but it really is not much of a problem.
After all, you are free to choose.
Makes sense. There's still a lot we can do to help and promote artists' works, but I don't think we should limit ourselves if it's impossible (as long as we aren't dishelping or harming them with our actions).
Also, very nice tip, that one about using Google's free use tool. I didn't have any idea that it existed. I'll try it out for my next post. :)
@mdbrantingham Check out the first paragraph of @vieira's comment. That's one of the aspects of outdated copyright laws, in my opinion.
You are harming artists when you deprive them of their rightful royalties on the use of their works - for whatever reason! You must pay a license fee on stock images even FOR PERSONAL USE! That's because I DON'T WORK FOR FREE!
please check this out it's from negativeland 1992
youtube.com/watch?v=lcKEzGFfOxE "Crosley Bendix Discusses the US Copyright Act"
i didn't include the "https://www." bcos for some reason the interface here on steemit acts stupid when i link vids and blocks out the text i type. Ok so traditional copyright and distribution are dead PERIOD. have been for awhile. The problem people are having is how to hang on to power once had and what is next. To the first part you can't. To the second part we aren't sure. Here is what doesn't work deluding ourselves and each other that what is broken or on a course of certain failure is worth continuing with no effort to change. Use whatever you want however you want as far as you are able the system has not figured much out in regards to these things at this stage. what was once illegal now whould not be and what once was right or wrong in regards to theft is now a sort of sharing. have a moral compass as best you can
This sounds like what an Objectivist would say that the highest moral objective is his own happiness and to achieve it to use whatever means necessary.
And this is what makes humans evil and greedy that they would take whatever they want, use whatever they want in order to survive.
This is the reason why we pushing ourselves to extinction as the I persona is the only thing that matters.
Please don't give me the BS that governments and entities are stifling freedom and choice that there must be change and so Copyright and intellectual properties are but chains we put into other people.
Someone worked hard on a piece, someone waited in the rain to take a shot, someone worked on a theorem that changed the world. Is it bad to attribute it to creators I don;t think so because you are valuing their contribution.
Even the most decentralized piece of technology Bitcoin and the first design of the blockchain technology is still attributed to the unknown Satoshi Nakamoto.
You have your opinion and I have my opinion and by stating that
then it shows we are on the other side of the spectrum on this matter and will not agree.
Exactly! I work hard at what I do - not so that others can take it "just because it is there." My freedom to earn a living is being stifled by those who think it is OK to take my work and not bother to pay a licensing fee if they think it is worth using!
I'll embed the video here: (also, use https://busy.org, it's a better interface)
I share your views somewhat, and I very much agree with your arguments. I feel like people are being way too conservative in their assessments of propriety and we end up in difficult situations such as this one. The nature of memes is for them to be shared unattributed, and they're usually made from what would be considered "copyrighted material".
Is the whole of reddit, 4chan and 9gag based off picture piracy? I think it's more of an evolution of the rewriting principle of humanity. Everything we have is a remake. We take what is around us and we mold it to be our own original work.
However, I also believe that we should try to give authors as much credit as possible because we would like, as well, to be given credit as much as possible when our works are taken for other purposes.
But if a writing I make ends up in the hands of millions of people who have forgotten my name, I don't want some auntie whipping their child for telling the story of a long-lost author without proper attribution.
I recommend to deliberately denote pictures with unknown authorship. This way, the image is not unattributed, but attributed as unknown author, which might make people think twice before bashing you.
At the very least, some of them might at least be incentivized to look for the author themselves and give you a heads up.
That may be cool too! I hadn't thought of that. On Qurator, you're required to link to the origin of your pictures, and if you can't, you just can't use those pictures. I find it very discouraging and think that it deters content creation, since sometimes I want to write stuff that is based on a specific picture, and if I were unable to do so, my text would serve no purpose.
And yeap! I always try to find the original author of things if I use them and are not old enough to be of free use. However, I won't spend a whole day on it if it's not warranted. It's only a reasonable effort that I'd expect of anyone as a form of respect to authors and content creators.
Respect to this creator, would mean paying the licensing fee. :-) Linking to the originator avoids Plagiarism, but not Copyright Violation! I hope you understand the difference. Plagiarism is not illegal, but Copyright Infringement is! Using my image and then linking to it does not pay my bills. Copyright last for the life of the photographer + 70 years, by the way. :-)
I agree with you in all your comments, except this one point, which arguably is at the center of discussion.
I think as @maverickinvictus said, it doesn't matter if it's your personal blog or not. Monetization is where the line is. If you are making a lot of money using a copyrighted image without obtaining a license, then it will be a problem. Same rules as a commercial blogger. I don't think you can claim this is just a small personal corner of the internet and be exempt from the same rules as a professional blogger.
That being said, a lot of what you are saying is true-- there are certain rules that don't really make any sense, and it revolves around the "fair use clause" which I don't really know enough about and have been scratching my head around because for example: can I use a movie trailer poster? To me this should be an obvious yes, but there seem to be some set rules about sizes and such (too lazy to look up now, but there's a section in Wikipedia that tries to explain the rules here, and Wikipedia does not even have the same rules as a professional blogger due to its free nature)
Finally... For a source that you cannot properly attribute, I'm with @bogenschleif , I would document that it is unknown and that you tried the Google search with no good results, etc. I don't think you should be banned from using it. Also hilariously there's some sort of fair use loophole where you make derivative work or something... Though I don't know exactly how that works.
Got it. I think that I'd still try to debate whether what I'm doing is "commercial". I don't feel like it's commercial.
And I think that the fair use clause doesn't allow for derivative work unless there is a certain amount of modifications. I'm not sure either.
And you made me think of memes again. This meme:
Oh, no, there's an album cover, I don't have a license to share the album cover. By sharing this meme, I'm breaking the law! ??? What about the maker of the meme? There are all of these little nuances to owned stuff that make it really hard to ascertain what is proper use, what isn't, and why.
Oh no! In 7 days you're getting money! Good luck with the law :P
😂😂😂 Lol, so evil. I'll have to use the money for lawyer fees.
It's commercial! You are making money! Your blogs will be forever on the Blockchain and you are risking photographers issuing DMCA Takedown notices against Steemit, which is going to harm the whole Steemit community!
You will also be risking Small Claims Court action if Bill 3945 passes Congress! Photographers are very excited about this Bill!
Good point of view Sharon!
As for me, I do not have a strong point of view on this one but other people are very particular on author rights so just to not get myself in trouble around here I post where the source of those photos are coming from. :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Exactly. Regardless of how much we actually agree with the regulations and views, it tends to be better to go with the flow if you want the benefits of social acceptance. This is better for joining curation teams and such, and for showing a professional image.
I agree totally as well. ^^
Whether or not your usage is commercial, you have no right to use any image without express permission from the creator or a licensing fee being paid. I have no right to use anyone's blog! Blog writers have no right to use my images without my permission or a licensing fee being paid. Period! So, to answer your question - no you should not be using the images! If you like an image enough, pay the licensing fee to use it! I already found one user on here who made over $1,000 off his "tiny hub" using my image illegally as clickbait!
And what do you mean about limiting your creativity? That puzzled me. You can still be very creative and use an image you have found by paying the license fee! You have that option if you really like the work!
The ONLY time that image use is OK without permission is if you are writing a blog ABOUT THE IMAGE WITH A CRITIQUE OF THE IMAGE! Any other usage is unauthorized. Also, attribution does not pay the bills and put food on the table for working professionals! My hairdresser or plumber can't survive on "exposure" for their work and neither can I! I have thousands of images available for licensing on the web, so if you like my image that you find on someone else's website (probably legitimately paid for) please take the time to get a license for your own usage like the original website did!
It may be a pain for you to find the right image for your blog, but why do you have the right to use someone else's work? I don't have the right to copy and use your blog, do I?
As a stock photographer, sometimes it was a pain for me to create the image too. Sometimes I had to pay models, buy props, drive or fly great distances etc. - not to mention the overheads of equipment, software and continuing education.
Until a few years ago, I also had the added expense of rent for a studio. I did not invest in my business with the idea that I would give away my work for free! Who in their right minds would operate business that way?
My overheads are like those of any business. Unauthorized usage of my work cuts deeply into my profits. My images are not free! I'm not sure what kind of work you are in, but I assume you don't work for free either. I rely on my income from stock licensing.
Luckily for ALL CONTENT PROVIDERS though - that includes blog writers too - the US Congress is about to vote on a Bill that is going to make it very easy for all content creators to go after unauthorized use in a Small Claims Court set up just for us! Anyone using images on Steemit without having permission is going to be a fair target when this Bill passes! And because those images can easily be found on a Google search for years to come, I would not advise anyone on Steemit to use images swiped from the web! Steemit is a US based company subject to US copyright laws!
You did ask for opinion, so you got it! LOL! It is a subject dear to my heart!
btw thank you cryptosharon! for such a compelling post it cuts right to the heart of the matter in regards to crypotcurrencies, blockchain & present state of technology... and so many other things