Thanks for your support! 😊

Thanks! :-) I wrote a post about the same thing. I would go one step further and put the image that you have found on Pixabay into Tineye, because there is always the chance that someone (surprise! surprise!) swiped the image from somewhere and uploaded it there. Pixabay is not responsible for an end user using an image that is actually copyright material. It is caveat emptor (although no one is paying for anything. LOL)

I would love to see how you tactfully handle it. :-) Tag me sometime. LOL!  It's easy enough to do with newcomers, but not at all easy when a whale or dolphin is doing it. Unfortunately, Steemcleaners does not handle copyright infringement, so we are on our own! They don't consider it plagiarism if ANY source is listed, and I don't agree with that. But, it's the best they can do for now, and I'm all behind them!

Yes, I can imagine that, because supposedly information will just spread like a virus. Hmm!

I know. It’s just a photograph.......  I read the comments from him. Report it to Steemcleaners. At least they will slap him with plagiarism as there is not even a wrong source cited!!

Thanks! It really is not worth the risks. Someone will get sued sooner or later. It's not a matter of **if**, but of **when**. Steemit is beginning to get known, and known as a place **for making money.**  It won't be long before some very high earning and powerful photographer finds his work on here, and what's more he's not being compensated! Taking an image for personal use is bad, taking it to post on a blog is worse, and taking it to post on a for-profit site where the poster stands to make money is far worse! The likelihood of being sued has gone way up because of what Steemit stands for! A court recently ruled that even anonymous posters are not exempt from copyright infringement lawsuits, and must be unveiled if they are doing something illegal!

Thanks for your detailed response. It’s crazy that people would think that anything on the web is free. The idea of the Internet was that it was free to use! Lol! Not that everything on it was free!  Try telling Amazon that all their products should be free!  Stock photography is no different. It is a product offered through websites. Before the Internet became popular for licensing stock, my images were listed as thumbnails in paper catalogs that were sent out to clients. I still have a collection of  them gathering dust in my garage!

Early on , businesses mostly licensed the work from the web in large files for advertising and print. Web usage at that time was not permitted,  but businesses purchased huge digital files for use in printed media. Times changed though, so the agencies started providing a cheaper license for web use, or they would sell a more expensive license that would cover all uses including web use. That’s where the problem started really. Swiping a thumbnail from an agency is one thing, but now decent size files can be swiped from those who legally pay to use them!

Reputable blogs and websites are good clients, who pay the licensing fee. When others swipe an image from those sites to use in their blogs, it so amateurish and unprofessional. Licensing for web use can be very cheap and reasonable, and should be part of the budget of someone hoping to make a profit from their blogs if the work they want happens to be available for licensing!  For a site that boasts so many bloggers, I am amazed at how few actually license the stock images they are using! I have let a couple of infringements on my own images slip by with a slap on the wrist, but I’m not going to be so lenient going forward. I will report them to the agencies as I do with the other violations I find in the web!!

Your idea of somehow licensing images on here has been brought up before. Stock licensing contracts are lengthy and drawn up by lawyers. I don’t believe it  would work, because you would in effect be setting up a stock agency available for all people on the web! On the other hand, if someone familiar with running a stock agency were to set up that would work!!

There are groups on here giving away free work, but the problem is there has to be some kind of  written agreement and licensing. It is dangerous territory because they are not just providing free work to Steemit, but to the whole web with no protections of property releases or model releases, and no guarantees that the work is their own to give away! 

The idea of sharing post profits with the photographer is a great one, because it would eliminate all images swiped from the web but it would be a problem for those using CCO licenses, though. So I am not sure how you would get around that!

Thanks! As recently as last month, Alamy made a collection for me from an infringer. I did not even know that the image had been taken. I just got a surprise payment with explanation in my monthly statement! The agencies have a professional version of Tineye, and are constantly scanning the web for copyright violations. They take it very seriously, thank God! Those who pay the licensing fee are also being violated, because they trust that the image is only being used in certain ways! They are paying for certain rights that are often being violated!

What I omitted to say is the copyright is THE LAW, Believing you have the right to use anything you find on the Internet is OPINION!

There are 3 kinds of people in this regards in my opinion. There are those who are willing to learn and will not take images from the web anymore, because they have a moral conscience ; then there are those who may listen for a while and won't take images from the web because they are afraid of being caught; and then there are those who believe they have a right to everything they see and are not afraid of the consequences.  I will never be able to change the minds of the second and third groups  of people, but I can appeal to the consciences of the people in the first group.

Thanks. I’m excited that there is going to be some changes in the stock photography business using the block chain. It could be the end of piracy. 😊

You do some awesome work! Do you provide some kind of license for the free wallpaper usage? I notice some groups on Steemit offering their work free on Steemit, but I don’t think they are providing any usage licenses like a Creative Commons one for protection.

Yes, it's far better to use your own work. The problem is, if you have used an image you should not have used in the past, the post is still out there on the web for the photographer to find! 

Remember too, that the source is NEVER a newspaper article, but it is the **_photographer and/or  licensing agency_** from where the photo originated. Citing a source does absolutely nothing. It is still a copyright violation, even if you place my copyright symbol and name under the photograph (which is what all legitimate companies do when they have paid a licensing fee.) You need permission or you need to pay a fee. I can't stress that enough! Also, because Steemit is for profit, a whole big can of worms is being opened in my opinion! This is no ordinary blogging site, or we would not even all be here!

If you can't find the source of an image, it's quite simple, you can't use the image. PERIOD!  It's probably not even worth looking any further unless you are willing to pay the licensing fee. If the article is from a reputable news site,  then they have paid a licensing fee, which you must also do if you wish to use what you see. If you find the image on someone else's blog, if it's a reputable blogger, again he/she will have paid a fee to use that image! 

If an image has already been stolen, then copying it reduces further  the value of that image to the photographer. When an image is to be licensed, a client will often search to see how an image is being used on the web. Ironically, because of that, the  more popular an image is for stealing, the less likely it is that the photographer will be able to license it! 

Hope this helps a little more. Keep on adding your own work, and you will be fine!

Thanks! It would be great to see Steemit as a place where only content that is created in a professional manner exists. We are a self policing community. So it’s up to everyone to take responsibility.

You are very wrong, but I can see why you are confused. Most people on here are not familiar with image licensing and rights because they have had no commercial experience of photography and its usage, and they don't bother to learn about them either. Anyone posting images has a responsibility to learn about what they are doing.  It is copyright infringement to take an image without permission. Period! 

I have yet  been able to pay any of my bills from a credit line. LOL! And the plumber is not willing to do work for me simply because I will spread his name around. When you have purchased the license for the image and you are using it, then you also must state the source. That's where all the confusion comes from.  If you are using a CCO license, you must  state the source according to the licensing agreement. Pixabay images are supposedly copyright free, but there is no guarantee of that. 

You can't just take an image from an article. That is copyright infringement. If you want to use that same image, you must find the actual source and license the image for yourself.  That article is never the source. The source is the photographer. Of course it takes time, but no one has the right to use the work anyway without payment or permission. That's what **All Rights Reserved** means. I reserve the rights to use all of my images no matter where they are on the web. Just because web site A purchased a license for their image, doesn't mean that  Website B can now take the image without licensing it! Licenses have restrictions too. If you take an image from an article, you have no contract with the licensing agency, so you have no idea what the restrictions on that image usage is!  If models are involved there are restrictions about how images with people may be used. Sometime too, and image is only available for licensing for a short period of time in a certain form in certain countries! 

Just liking my image in an article, gives no one the right to use it! If I like someone's shoes, that does not give me the right to take them and wear them at a wedding because I don't have the time to go looking for where I can buy a similar pair. 

Simply listing the source may stop Steemcleaners from accusing someone of plagiarizing, but it does not stop a photographer from suing for copyright infringement. (It actually is still plagiarism, because the REAL source has to be listed, but no one on Steemit is policing, so the it's left up to the blogger to post the real source - and very few do.)

I don't understand your question. Have you posted this on the wrong post perhaps? if it is in the right place and I am missing something, copyright is copyright. :-)

Than you so much. Although Copyright Infringement is not prevented on Steemit, I think that unsuspecting people should be made aware. There will always be those who don’t care about the rights of others and will continue to take what isn’t theirs as long as they can get away with it. But the average person needs to be aware that Copyright Infringement is illegal and can have dire consequences - especially with money being made from the posts on Steemit!

Tineye is very useful. You just drag and drop your image into it and you can find out if anyone else is using your image on the web! Every incidence is not found. It depends on the web crawlers and the sites they have scanned. Because my images are stock images, the agencies make sure the images are submitted to the data base forTineye so that they can be found.

 For your own personal images, it would depend on whether the image has been indexed via Steemit  You can do the same thing with Google Images, so you may want to try both. I have better results with Tineye, but I think it's because they are stock images mostly.

The watermark can easily be removed, and your photography doesn't need one to be copyright, but adding it on Steemit let's people know right away that the image is yours. 

Hope this helps. :-)

Most people don't mind credit being given for their images, because it is not their livelihood, and they don't understand copyright.  That's why it has become difficult for professional photographers. They are expected to not mind either.  I have  just been doing an online search for some of my own work this afternoon and will be sending notices of unauthorized use to my agencies on a slew of them. I do this every once in a while and the agencies handle the rest. Unless images are removed, they are still there to be found many years down the road. An image is copyright the minute the shutter is released.:-)

I have been trying to educate people for 6 months about this, and will keep working on it. As I said, the problem is that new people join and they see all the phony links, so they do the same!  Thanks for commenting. :-)

You are right. Most don't know how to use images in their content. That's why I write these posts every now and again, as do some other professional photographers on here.

That sounds interesting! I will have a look! Thanks!

Just had a look! That's a great resource. Thanks again!

Yes, you are right. Google is a search engine and you can use it to your advantage to very quickly find out what the copyright status of an image is. There is also Tineye, which you can use to double check an image you have found. 

It’s a great idea to think about a sharing for photographers, but still permission from the original photographer would always be required, because some images have restrictions set on them. For example, there are images that are restricted to use in certain territories, and there are restrictions on using images with people in them unless they have signed model releases. Even then, there are restrictions agreed upon in the model release!

Thank you so much! I click on every **Image Source link**, and I'm appalled that people don't bother to find out if they they have a right to use an image or not. 99.9% of the time they don't have the right to use it! When i see someone using an image with a CCO license and they take pains to properly give credit the way the license actually requires it, I Upvote, tip and praise them! Positive reinforcement! :-)

I appreciate your stopping by and commenting! It is quite logical. Everyone expects others to have their written content protected, but some don't give any thoughts to the rights of the image creators. Yet, copyright infringement is illegal!