Social Media Guide for Wattpad

Image Best Practices

This great topic was suggested by the lovely and talented @alexkarola! I’m glad as it also dovetails with the previous post on YouTube. 

Please note: I am not giving out legal advice here, just common sense advice. If you have legal questions, consult with an intellectual property attorney who is qualified to practice in your area.

The Murky World of Online Intellectual Property Permissions

There are a ton of images online. Which ones are you allowed to use? 

That’s a tricky question with a tricky answer. Here are a few images that you can definitely use:

1.       Photographs you’ve taken, and drawings you have done (say, in Paint).

2.       Photographs that a friend has taken (or drawings they have done) AND you have permission to use the image(s). Written permission is best.

3.       Photographs that a stranger has taken (or drawings they have done) BUT you have gotten written permission to use the image(s). How do you get this permission? Write to them and ask. Be courteous, credit them by name and be sure to link back to their site.

4.       Images with a Creative Commons license BUT check the fine print. Two great sources for Creative commons licensed images are Creative Commons.org and Wikimedia.org (this is Wikimedia, not Wikipedia).

5.       Public domain images, clearly marked as such.

6.  Imagery from Zemanta, a WordPress plugin specifically designed to find Creative Commons and public domain images being used on other WordPress blogs and made available through the Zemanta community. 

Which images are you not allowed to use?

Pretty much all others, even if you can right-click and save them to your desktop. Even if you can take a screenshot. Even if they don’t have a watermark. Even if 5,000 other sites are using the image. Even if the photographer doesn’t claim a copyright (the creation of the work of art creates the copyright; it does not have to be declared)

Photomanipulations

In the world of Star Trek and fan fiction, there are a ton of photographs which may or may not be okay to share which have been manipulated. On one end of the spectrum are canon images where someone has photoshopped, say, a different color uniform. Near the middle of the spectrum are images where the original image has been more extensively photomanipulated, such as the addition of Klingon cranial ridges. Far on the other end of the spectrum are actor and actress heads photoshopped onto naked bodies. 

Are these works of art, or are they people trampling others’ intellectual property rights? It’s hard to say. Star Trek in particular seems to look the other way if the works are not being used to make money. The current license owners seem to understand that this form of fan art, much like fan fiction, tends to enhance, rather than diminish, their profit margins. But that doesn’t cover wholly unrelated actors and actresses whose images have been photoshopped into uniforms or given Vulcan ears or the like. At that point, it starts to become a case by case basis. What amuses Bruce Willis might appall Gwyneth Paltrow (I have seen photoshopping of both). This also does not cover the original photographer’s rights. 

I tend to treat these as derivative works of art. I ask for permission from the photomanipulation artist before posting them, and give full credit. I never use them for anything I’m selling. And if I am ever asked to take them down, I will verify the identity of whoever is doing the requesting and, if it’s confirmed, I’ll take them down. This is not a lawsuit that I could win. 

Protect yourself. Use images that you have permission to use, or take them down immediately if you’ve made a mistake. 

The link is to Creative Commons.Org. The image is a list of the various licenses and their differences. The YouTube video is about creative commons licensing in New Zealand but it should apply to most countries. 

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