Thanks for the post Kim it was helpful. I just found out that Getty Images offers a free and legal embed service with credits for the photographer on it if anybody is interested. Of course you can’t use it to sell or place affiliate links cause is totally wrong but for illustration purposes is great. Just look for Getty Images embed.

I love IFB but I think you guys needs to step out the game when it comes to information and look for better solutions for every situation. Not everyone wants to be a personal style blogger, there’s other categories on fashion too.

This article does a good job of outlining what qualifies as Fair Use for images online. There is definitely a difference between using a photographer’s artwork to improve your blog posts that you’re generating revenue from, vs. a product image that is linked back to the retailer and driving revenue to them. In most cases, images from a company for their products are fine. Good question though! http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/

It’s effort to take your own images and costs a lot of money (LOTS! So the 750$ for a copyright infringment sounds like a bargain to me) for the camera equipment. I only use my own images on my blog – 100%. As bloggers we all create unique content and photos are a big part of it … in case of my blog it’s mainly photos. And even taking a photo of green peppers takes effort.

There is also the option of asking the owner of the photo for permission – in most cases they would allow usage for credit/backlink when it is not of commercial nature.

There are websites which help to protect your images and it is much easier now to track the usage. Reverse Image search in Google or pixsy.com.

If you have permission or you have a relationship with the person who took the photo, obviously there shouldn’t be a problem. But publishers pay a lot of money for street style and celebrity photos often in the form of a Getty or other subscription service, or by hiring their own photographer. It’s not, as I understand it, OK to use these photos without permission. The chances you will actually be sued may be slim but it’s a risk.

Like I said I’m not a lawyer but when I was a tech and science reporter, “Fair Use” was a confusing concept that we used cautiously. Stay tuned, I’m hunting for a copyright lawyer IFB can interview to better answer all your questions!

I have the same problem. I have a blog and regularly post about street style and beauty, so of course I have to take the photos from other sites. I always link back to them. A lot of blogs do this, so hopefully it’s not a big problem. I recently talked about it in a group on Fb and many people say that you can’t take photos from the website, most of all from Getty Images (even if you publish them with the watermark, which is something brands and bloggers do, sometimes). I was suggested to ask fro permission to every site I take the photos from! It would be an endless thing to do. Also, since Pinterest and Tumblr are a huge source of beauty and street style photos, finding the original source is almost impossible.