MYTH BUSTED! Images on your websites are safe to use if you had a web designer.
The legal myth that we are busting today relates to images on your website. This happened to a friend of mine, She had a web designer design a site for her five years ago, then five years later she received a letter of demand from Getty Images saying that the images on her website infringed copyright.
So, she came to me and she said, “I paid a web designer to do my website, surely I’m safe.” But that is a myth, you are not safe just because you pay a designer to design your website. Yes, in Australia and New Zealand it is their responsibility to make sure that the website is fit to be used, other countries may differ. So she could have gone back to the web designer and said, “You know, I’m now being sued by Getty Images,for these images that you put on my website.” Then get the money back from the web designer, but because it was her website, she was responsible for those images that were on her site.
So she had to pay the license fee, now it could be that the web designer had a license to use those images, but most licenses are not transferable or sublicensable. So, he may have been able to use them on his website, but that did not give him the right to put it on my friend’s website. So, if you get somebody to put anything up on the internet for you, or design brochures or anything like that, always make sure that you know where those images have come from, and that you have the license to use those images.
Now, if you have the license to use the image, that doesn’t give somebody else the right to use it in conjunction with your business. For example, I did a lot of blogging for a woman’s business magazine a few years ago, and they asked me to provide the blog, which is fair enough, but then they asked me to provide the image that went with that blog. So I said, “Well, I don’t have my own images” And they said, “Oh, don’t you have stock images?” Then I replied “Yes, I do have a license to stock image websites, but my license is for me only, it doesn’t allow the woman’s magazine to then use those images in conjunction with my blog.”
So, who is responsible? If it is your website, your blog, you are responsible and you should not give the images to somebody else to use. It has been an absolute blast, busting legal myths to protect your business so that you can live the lifestyle you deserve. My name is Cathryn Warburton and I am The Legal Lioness. If you would like to see more legal myths busted pop onto my website ‘LegalLioness.com’.
