RF Stock Photos and copyrighted website?

KAN · Post by **KAN** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 11:56 pm

I'm helping my cousin building a website, and he plans to use Royalty-Free Stock Photos (because they're cheap; hi-res can go as low as US $5). I told him that no one can have exclusive rights on RF Stock Photos, and the photographer can sell the same image as many times as he wants. My cousin is OK with that.

However, once I read about copyrighted website. IIRC copyrighting a website is pretty much easy; you can just put the copyright symbol on each page or something, and the copyright is all yours.

Now my cousin is concerned with that. Supposed he buys an RF photo named dining.jpg and uses it for his website. However, supposed a guy named Larry has already bought the same dining.jpg photo and put it on his website as well. Moreover, Larry has also copyrighted his website. If Larry sees the RF photo dining.jpg on my cousin's website, can Larry sue my cousin for copyright infringement?

Post by **emmzee** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 12:12 am

I am not a lawyer but ... no, Larry can't sue your cousin. An RF photo can be integrated in whatever way you want into your own work and Larry has no more right to use it than your cousin does.

Incidentally, two good free sources for photos are:
www.sxc.hu
(make sure you check the terms for the photo you wanna use)
and
www.flickr.com/search/advanced/
(just make sure you use the advanced search and check off the "creative commons" options at the bottom)

KAN · Post by **KAN** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 12:24 am

I see. Thanks!

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 6:40 am

I'll Sue Ya!

On a more serious note: You can always make your own images.

Post by **Dogbreath** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 5:24 pm

Larry Laffer wrote:I'll Sue Ya!

What makes that song so hilarious, is that most of the lawsuits he mentioned have actually taken place in the U.S. or U.K., including, in fact, a guy who sued a home owner because he broke his ankle slipping on his floor while robbing his home.