05.02.07
Whoops…
A few weeks ago, reader Dave Hall took a look at the Rough Guide to Blogging and noticed that it said this:
“You can use an image from elsewhere on the Web without copying it to your server. Simply find the address of the individual image (not the page it’s displayed on) and use the IMG tag in the usual way.
Before posting an image on your blog, however, it’s best to ask for permission from the copyright holder. In reality, nothing is likely to happen to you for using an image without permission - especially in the case of celebrity photos and other commonly circulated stock photos - but at the very least it’s polite to ask before using, say, a drawing from an artist’s website.”
As Dave pointed out, that’s “hotlinking” and definitely not kosher for bloggers. I wrote him back and explained that he was definitely right; you should definitely ask permission to re-post images from another blogger and then host the image yourself.
Thanks for pointing that out Dave!
And here’s an important article from Aviva Directory that you should probably read: “12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know.” Included in the twelve? Whether to Disclose Paid Posts, The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails, Domain Name Trademark Issues, Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content, and of course, Is Deep Linking Legal?