Читать книгу Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies - Michelle Krasniak - Страница 73

You can’t (legally) use extended content from someone else’s website, blog, or social media page on your own site, even if you can save it or download it. Nope, not even if you include a credit line saying where it came from. Not even if you use only a portion of the content and link to the rest. Not text, not graphics, not compiled data, not photos. Nothing. Nada. Nil. Zilch.

Though small text extracts with attribution are permitted under the fair use doctrine, the copyright concept is intended for individuals and educational institutions, not for profit-making companies. If you don’t obtain permission, you and your company can be sued for copyright infringement. In the best-case scenario, you can be asked to cease and desist. In the worst case, your site can be shut down, and you might face other damages.

The way around this situation is simple: Send a permission request, such as the one in the nearby sidebar, “Sample copyright permission.”

Be especially careful with photographs, which are usually copyrighted. Here are a few places to find free or low-cost images legally:

 Select from the wealth of material offered under a Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org). Search for items that can be used for commercial purposes or are in the public domain.

 Search for copyright-free images from the federal government.

 Take advantage of all the free, high-resolution images from Unsplash (https://unsplash.com).

 FreeImages (www.freeimages.com) has thousands of free photographs.

 Search http://images.google.com: Click the Settings link in the bottom-right corner of the window, and then select Advanced Search from the pop-up menu that appears. In the Advanced Search screen that appears, scroll down to the Usage Rights drop-down list and select Free to Use or Share, Even Commercially. Note that these images may still require attribution or have other limits on use; you should still contact the copyright holder for permission.

 Look for stock images from sources such as iStockphoto (www.istockphoto.com), Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com), or Freerange Stock (http://freerangestock.com).