Students Get $5000 Legal Demand for Using CC Image on a Blog
Pay attention to the terms of the licence!
Another day, another lawsuit. This is why I use my own images on my blogs most of the time! This case was a student media group at a US University. They had selected an image of a syringe to use on a blog about the covid pandemic. They downloaded the image from a well-known and legitimate Creative Commons website and thought they’d complied with the terms of the licence.
So why then, did they get a $5000 demand from the photographer who owned the copyright to the photograph? Because they failed to read the licence properly, so they didn’t link back to the licence and the photographer’s website.
Some Creative Commons images come with a detailed list of conditions that users must adhere to, and this was one of those images with a relatively complex licence.
Every Creative Commons licence is different
If you’re using Creative Commons images, you should be aware that not all Creative Commons licences are equal. On Wikimedia Commons, every single image has a different licence!
We’re all used to Unsplash, which has a pretty straightforward licence, and the crediting is built in if you use the Medium feature. But some other…
