C3 Patent and Intellectual Property Law

Jan042010 | Steve O'Donnell

How many copyrights does your blog infringe?

If you are a blogger you’re probably familiar with blog scrapers (sites that take other people’s content and republish somewhere else). Bloggers have a good reason to be upset about scrapers; after all, it is someone else taking your work. However, most bloggers don’t give a second thought about snatching a picture online and using it for a post.

If you find a picture on Flickr, another blog, or somewhere else online and upload it to your own blog (or worse yet, inline link to it from your blog) without permission, you’re committing a copyright violation.

By grabbing whatever picture you find that fits with your post you’re risking damages up to $150,000 for a registered work. Admittedly, that number is an extreme possibility, and probably one that would never be levied against a blogger, but it is technically possible. A more likely damages award would be $750 for a registered work, plus lots more in attorney fees.

Most graphic files you encounter online are not going to be registered with the copyright office, in that case damages would likely be limited to actual damages and an injunction to take down the picture, plus whatever you have to pay your attorney.

More likely than someone suing you for scraping their .jpg is them sending your ISP a takedown notice, which is probably going to result in them taking your site down until you remove the picture. It’s less onerous that taking a $150k hit, but still not good.

If you want to be a good internet citizen, and have the moral authority to complain if your blog gets scrapped, don’t take from others. There are plenty of sources for Creative Commons images, Google Image Search’s Advanced tab will pull such images, as will the Creative Commons' own home. Just make sure you comply with the license.

Image published in 1906 found on cyberlawcentre.org and is from the Library of Congress' Bob Hope Vaudeville and American Variety Archive.