OK, I wasn’t mad at you until you started this Danny Boy shit. Now, I gonna tear your head off and take a dump down your throat. I got a history with that song, and it ain’t a happy history.

Flashback to the waning days of the Johnson administration. I’m eight, and we’re living two doors down from the Carneys. And Grandma Carney is camped out on the front stoop all day, every day. She is a mammoth woman, probably 250 pounds of Irish women flesh; jello-sack haunches and thighs; speed bags of chicken-skin-covered fat dangling from the bottom of her biceps; garganuan, Oprah-sized boobs – I mean huge, pendulous monstors; all topped off with a Bozo-fright wig of Brillo-pad hair dyed a hideous orange. And every time I’d walk down to the Carenys to try to scare up Mikey C to fill out a came of ball or whatever, she’d grab me, and squeeze my head into the baby-powder-and-sweat-smelling canyon between those monster titties, the wings of fat under her arms puddinged around my noggin like Satan’s earphones, and she’d sing Danny Boy.

Seriously, man, I got issues with that song.

With Dudes of Legend, you not only stole my wallet, you wild bearded stallion, you stole my heart too.

It’s okay. I’m taking good care of that heart. I have it in brine. Sometimes I sup from said brine. It gives me power.

Regarding Image Usage: Recently there was a huge incident regarding a blogger (who was paid), who illegally used the image of an illustrator in a post. When called on it by the illustrator who’d done the piece in question, he removed the image but then went on to blame the illustrator publicly for not watermarking his images and then fell back on the “everyone else does it” defense. Don’t be that guy. Illustrators, Art Directors, Photographers and Copyright Lawyers went after him publicly on every site he contributed to, his own homepage, and his twitter account for over a week. It’s likely that the relationships he had with clients (one of whom being CBS) was harmed because he put them at risk for a lawsuit.

I’m not going to give you a copyright lecture (and probably don’t need to as you depend upon the umbrella of said law, as well) so I’ll boil it down to this: Don’t use an image that you don’t have permission to use. Simple as that. If you can’t find out who owns the rights to the image, find another one. I know you’re not getting money for the blog, but you still need to attain their permission in order to use their work. Period. Whatever deal you work out with them to give you permission is up to you and them – some will just want a link, many will want money (is this sounding familiar?). Plus, you might find out that the copyright to that image you’re interested in, is owned by a big corporation – something you might not want to get entangled with.

For example, most of my images are owned by Wizards of the Coast, which is a subsidiary of Hasbro. I only have the right to use the images for self-promotion and the manufacturing of prints. Without express written permission to use an image, they would likely come after you.

Plus, image makers have the right not to be associated with something that they might disagree with or be offended by – an excellent baseline argument for permission with or without the law.

So, ask permission. If all else fails, pay the artist… See what I did there? I’m witty. See? Shut up…hate you so much…make fun of me….

@Steven:

Awesome info. Won’t be that guy.

Let me ask a coupla questions.

First, practical: outside of Flickr, what’s the best way to find art and photography online that subscribes to a creative commons license? That’s easy to enough to go with, right? CC offers you the various permutations of ask, don’t ask, what-have-you, and a single location for said images (how’s DeviantArt on this?) will really help to give images for the blog. My photography gets me far enough, so I’ll never be without graphics, but… y’know, sometimes I want to move beyond that.

Second, philosophical: So, as noted, I have a Tumblelog. Do the same permutations apply? Tumblr obviously has this great “Reblog!” feature, and if Tumblr falls under this same level of concern, I’m not sure how it even stays afloat. Or what of sites like Abduzeedo, that post a passel of images found online (or FFFound) without contacting the image holders? Is there a line? Are both example sites over the line?

– c.

I’m with Dan on Danny Boy. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaate that song. Luckily, my mom had the chance to take an English last name, else I’d hear a lot more of it as Edward Shannon Sweeney.

On Beeker, I also tried to do one of him staring at you, with a word balloon with the questions, but it just got too busy. I might see if I can do a full desktop version with the notepad, though.

On photos, I try to use photos listed as “licensed for reuse” on Google Images, or using the Creative Commons search option on Flickr. I BELIEVE Zemanta automatically adds attribution, but I need to check that (especially since I’ve moved to Live Writer).

On the rest… man, I’ve had my head stuck in Exalted and Scion manuscripts for days, as well as making vidjo game stuf, so I haven’t had a chance to chime in on writing for free. Maybe later this week.

Chuck: Google Image Search has an option in Advanced Search that lets you search for licensing options.

OHHH DAAAAAANY BOY.

…ahem, no, that song sucks, everybody’s right.

@Eddy: I look forward to your thoughts! Eddyfate-dot-com awaits them. Also, good tips. Google Images, licensed for reuse — that works okay, then? That’s a safe route?

– c.

Sweet, then.

I talk with the missus about this rather a lot, as she’s spent some time with copyright law in her museum gig.

In the end, this is why I seldom have images on my blog. I tend to be big into attribution. (In some cases, when I think that attribution is clear, I leave it alone — like screenshots.) Even on Tumblr, I rarely reblog something unless it links back to the artist, comes with a copyright label, or has that smell about it of “released to the Internet for funny jollies,” in which case I presume the genie is out of the bottle. But even that makes me uncomfortable, so I keep it to an absolute minimum.

Google Images just scours the web for images. It is not a viable way to find images to use for blog posts, if you care about attribution. (Try telling this to Internet pop news sites, like CHUD, though.)

You have a certain degree of cover from the sheer volume of shenanigans going on online, but it’s not exactly honorable cover.

This is one of those things I’d talk to you (and some other bloggers) about if there was a way to do it without sounding like a narc.

@Will — good notes. Clarify, though, what Eddy says (Google Images, search for licensing options) is not a suitable path to finding good images?

– c.

See, other people commented while I was typing. I should say that I don’t know how good Google’s licensing-option search results are (Eddy probably knows better than I do), but it’s better than just going to Google Images, probably.

Diggit, then. Thanks! I want to fall down on the proper side of this, not the improper one. I appreciate the help, peeps.

Probably.

Part of it is a CYA thing, but the other part of it is, obviously, I want those who deserve credit to get the credit and not to steal images I shouldn’t be.

– c.

I’ll sometimes scan the free stuff at stock.xchng or the cheap stuff at istockphoto (they have a dollar bin) for appropriate images. In both cases, the use licenses are clearly laid out, and I can decide on usage based on whether or not I can comply. For example, a lot of artists want notification of use, but for something like a blog post, that’s too much work for me, so I just don’t use them.

-Rob D.

Read this page, including the bottom, wherein Google seems to absolve itself of all licensing issues and say, “Yeah, good luck.”

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=29508

Interesting questions. DeviantArt is more of a social network and portfolio site than anything. Plucking things off of there is pretty similar to plucking it off Flickr. I know a lot of people out there who use DeviantArt as their primary portfolio site (something I disagree with profusely, but that’s just my opinion). It’s best to assume that the images on that site are almost always owned by the folks posting them and you should ask for permission.

As far as FFFound and Abduzeedo, I’m not a lawyer so I don’t completely know the minutia of where these sight fall, but I suspect it is covered under fair use, which you can read up on here:

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Given that FFFound and Abduzeedo are just cataloging the works on the site, they’re probably covered. What I’ve never been certain of is how the whole sharing thing is covered. What I do know is that you can really only cover your own ass, and as long as you’re doing that you should be fine.

Another thing you’ll want to consider – even if it uglies up the site a bit – is to have the copyright owner under the image (unless it’s yours and you don’t care, or it’s public domain). If you get permission from someone to use their image, they’ll likely require it, so it’s a good idea to get in the habit of doing it.

In the case of public domain, Creative Commons is a good place to start for that kind of thing. There are also other, less-easily navigated databases that have many images to choose from. If you want to just plug something in that predates copyright or you suspect that the copyright might have expired, here’s a handy flowchart that’ll tell you:

http://www.sunsteinlaw.com/practices/copyright-portfolio-development/flowchart.htm

Another thing to consider are places like iStockphoto that give you a choice of works to buy for as little as $1. Sure, it costs you, but at least you know you’re covered.

Here’s the sad fact. The moment you put anything – images or words – on the internet, you have to assume that it will be used in some way where someone should have gotten your permission. It’s impossible to police everything but one thing that is certain is this: the more people know your name, the more likely they will come after you if you’re breaking the rules. So, it’s best to cover yourself every way you can and play it safe.

Steven:

Diggit.

Thing is, this site doesn’t do “captions” very well. I can attribute — it’ll just be at the bottom of the post, most likely.

Sadly, I don’t have time to contact image owners — that’s just a reality, I pump out a post a day, and if I had to wait on return confirmation, I’d never get the posts up.

So, what I really need to do, then, is find images that are purely in the public domain. Or, use my own, which is the large bulk of what I do, image-wise. And attribute where appropriate/possible.

Anything I’m missing, I’m listening.

– c.

Dunno if this helps or not, but I know the Creative Commons site has a search option that rifles through multiple sites: http://search.creativecommons.org/

You still have to do some verification footwork, of course, but at least it’s initially filtered…

Just read Will’s link. I think that’s primarily ass-covering, because the first few times I dug deeper, and found that the images were indeed correctly attributed. But it’s a fair point, and I might switch to using just Flickr.

Sounds fair to me. Given your time constraints (a contributing fact to a lot of people cutting corners), your policy is sound. If you need to ask permission, pass on it and find something else.

Notes at the bottom aren’t ideal, admittedly, but they are better than not attributing images at all (where necessary). In all reality, I’m just happy that you even thought about this as most folks do not.

I do have a curiosity, however: why is that you feel the need to have the images in the first place? I ask because in the incident I mentioned earlier, the writer in question stated that he likely would not get paid for his efforts if he did not have the images that accompanied them – not something that necessarily applies to you, but it came up during that altercation and I found that writer’s reasoning rather odd. If it’s better for you we can continue the conversation off board, but it is something that I’m really curious about as it seems really common for writers to be using images on the web and I’m quite interested in the reasoning behind it.

Steven:

I don’t require the images — I do think they make a site pop, and further, I like to show images I think are cool. Which is perhaps not the ethical way to do it, and I will change up accordingly, but, y’know, my Tumblr log is me pointing to stuff and saying, “Saw this. Liked it.” Generally, here, it might be similar, or it might be, “Saw this, thought it was relevant,” or, “Hey, ironic counterpoint.”

Blogs are hard to read on a screen — images, I think, soften the severity of reading lots of text. They give a page interest in the same way that a logo does, or a font. Necessary, no, but useful, yes.

– c.

Images totally improve the reading experience, a fact I tend to forget until after the fact.

Gotcha. Never really thought about it, but I understand your point. Despite being an illustrator, I don’t really need the pictures (probably a product of working on pictures all day long), but I do find it fascinating how the internet is strengthening the aesthetic symbiosis of words and pictures. It holds a lot of potential. I just hope everyone can figure out ways to pull things together for their purposes that don’t step on the toes of others. Not an easy minefield to navigate. For now, I’ll leave you to your writing, while I return to my painting. Wheeeeee!

So, I’m totally squarely in the crosshairs of that “amateur” group. I make a pretty good living doing other stuff, so I don’t really ever expect that my primary breadwinning-ness will come from writing. (Though I wouldn’t mind the occasional extra bit of spending money from something here and there.)

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about it.

My brother’s hobby is building large grills and smokers. Every time he finishes one, he’s looking at it to see how he can make the next one better.

I work with some folks who are musicians in their off-hours. Some of them have made their living at it in the past, some haven’t. But all of them practice. They like it when they perform in front of an audience (one not solely composed of their grandmas and other people naturally disposed to enjoy whatever they do) and that audience enjoys their work.

I’m not particularly concerned about whether I get paid for what I do, and in fact I’d get in some legal trouble if I did since a lot of it exists in somebody else’s fictional universe. But I really do care about improving my storytelling craft. Otherwise, I wouldn’t hang around writers’ blogs (not necessarily the same as “writing blogs”) and try to go off and apply what tidbits I can learn into my next little project.

On image sources, Marian Schembari tweeted this link yesterday: http://onbloggingwell.com/18-free-online-image-sources/
Also, I definitely aspire, and am reorganizing things to do more than that. For other fellow aspirants, I found this helpful: http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/2010/04/12/HowDoYouMakeTheTimeToWrite.aspx
Also, I definitely aspire. And am reorganizing things to do more than that. I realy found this helpful:

Now that was redundant. My iPhone sometimes burps on comment forms.

@Darren: Awesome. Thanks! Good eye.

@Kyle: Sounds like the right attitude, sir!

– c.

Grats on all the good stuff, you’ve addressed all the angst. My advice is let it go…if the ‘net is nothing else, it’s minute-fast. People are probably mad at someone else alreay and saying “Chuck? Chuck’s cool. He’s not *this guy!*”

K