Notionet

According to Business Today, 4.5 billion photos are shared on WhatsApp everyday. Social media statistics also state that 300 million photos are uploaded on facebook everyday!

Basing on the fact that you are reading this now, chances are you have uploaded, downloaded or shared an image within the past 6 days. This includes you in the large pool of ” image sharers”

Sharing photos is fun and not an issue until you start asking yourself this questions;

• How am i using the images?
• Which images am i sharing?
• Who owns these images?
• Are they attributed to anyone?

What is a copyrighted image

A copyrighted image is the one protected by copyright. The copyright law grants the original producer of an image the permission to use it at will with respect to publishing,selling and modifying the image among other rights.

So any original image is  copyrighted. This grants the original image producer/owner the right to sue anyone who uses the image inappropriately as stated by the law.

So here comes the question. Are your images copyrighted?

If the images you are using are not copyrighted, means that they are not yours but are owned by the one who produced them. That is they are not your original work. This denies you the right to their

• Commercial use. You cant sell the images or use them for business activities like promotions and branding.
• Modification. You cant use them in a way that suggests ownership i.e. interfering with their originality.
• Plus other rights…

With this knowledge, you can start being cautious about how you use the images that you download. This will save you from fines or even from putting you behind bars.

A solution for you

You don’t have to stop sharing images because you don’t own them. Thanks to creative commons that an image producer can dictate how his/her image will be used. That can include freedom to modification and commercialisation of the image.

Where can i get this images

Today there are many websites providing free and licensed images. Most are free while in some, you have to buy the license. For sites like shutterstock you don’t buy the image but the license.The image is free. In sites like pixabay, the images are 100% free. They can be used by anyone in whichever way they like.