Freelance Jobs / Help Wanted

**JGiannotti** · 01-23-2007, 12:04 AM

Hey, I'm looking for someone to help me gather humorous images for my website omgpix.com - I am willing to pay per hundred pictures gathered for me. You can easily download .zip files of hundreds of images from torrent websites... so that is a start. I just don't have the time.

My helper will need to make sure that there are no duplicate images in the final batch, no watermarks on any of the images, and no nudity on any of the images.

This is an extremely simple task for anyone who knows how to use the internet, and who has some free time. I would like to choose the person who will charge the least per hundred pictures gathered for me.

**ForrestCroce** · 01-27-2007, 04:47 AM

What you're describing is wholesale copyright violation. A handful of the images you get will have been released under a creative commons license or GPL, and some of the people who own the photos won't mind. But sooner or later somebody is going to sue you, and win.

In most of the world, a person owns the copyright to an image the moment they create it. They don't have to register their copyright; they only need to show it's theirs. Having the original, full sized image when you don't goes a long way toward that. If it's a photo, so does having the rest of the images from the same series. Or the exif metadata.

But it's not about getting sued; you really should ask people for permission to use their art to make a profit.

**JGiannotti** · 01-27-2007, 11:47 AM

I think you're looking way too far into the whole thing. There are plenty of websites that display media that is not their own. By simply giving credit and stating that the content of the website is copyright by the original creators, thousand of websites post flash games, images, video, flash cartoons, and other types of media. I'm not saying that is the magic fix, but if an artist doesn't want their media on someone else's website, the problem can be situated by just contacting them and asking them to take it off.

Do you think that the flash game websites that are being sold through the marketplace here every day are claiming full copyright to thousands of games in their database?

**vangogh** · 01-27-2007, 12:56 PM

Just because it's done doesn't make it right. It's quite possible many of the copyright holders of those images don't know they're being used on other sites.

You can't place the responsibility on the original artist. Unless you tell them you are going to use their image how are they really going to know you're using it.

Some people will have no problem letting you use their images, especially if you credit them and/or give them a link, but that doesn't mean all will. I know it happens that people use copyrighted images all the time. That still doesn't make it right.

There are plenty of royalty free images available online already. Why not just use those.

**ForrestCroce** · 01-27-2007, 04:46 PM

Ultimately the choice is yours; VanGogh and I are just giving you (good) advice. There are thousands of web sites and peer-to-peer torrents that violate copyrights, but there are also thousands of lawsuits. It's not a chance I'd take, but that has more to do with respecting other people's art.

In some cases crediting the artist is enough. You're welcome to use any of my Creative Commons images so long as you give me credit where the image shows up. But the rest of my photos are strictly off limits. In the US, I believe the default judgment if somebody notices their image being republished is $10,000 ... but I could be wrong on that. Also, under US and Euro law, the burden falls on the publisher to get permission, not the IP owner to know their work is being used and stop it. Giving credit is legally unrelated.

But this is all a moot point; if you're paying the lowest bidder to gather images by the hundred, you'll have no idea where they came from. Like VanGogh said, there are plenty of web sites that have free or public domain images. Most of what's on Wikipedia is either creative commons or GPL.