Without mentioning any names of hubbers I have seen a lot of photos of celebrities that I doubt are in the public domain or royalty free and I doubt very much if permission to use them has been granted. So I am wondering how strict this place is on hubs that use photos taken from other sites and elsewhere and where the hubber does not own the copyright?

In sites like Myspace site owners are not supposed to use photos they don't own but it looks like they turn a blind eye because there are loads of sites with pics of music, sports and film stars.

I have only been using my own photos on articles so far but fancy expanding into writing about some famous people and obviously don't have photos I own the copyright for. Just wondering what the situation here is on this matter?

Bard,

You can search on sites like Flickr for photos with a Creative Commons licence.

What happens is that sites like MySpace and Facebook have a clause in their Ts&Cs which gives them non-exclusive rights to any content users upload. They then bundle up that content and sell it to stock photo sites. People buy the stock photos, modify them, and release them under a Creative Commons licence.

I got a completely gorgeous photo of Amy Lee under a Creative Commons licence - I just haven't had a Hub relevant to her to put it on, yet.

Photos sent out in press releases can generally be reproduced with attribution. I don't know the strict legalities on that, but the media seem to be OK with it, and they all do it.

My point is that it IS possible to be ethical and still have photos of celebrities, if you make a bit of an effort.

Jenny

Genereally speaking, the issue would be not so much the celebrities themselves, but the photographer who took the photo.

I know that Perez Hilton got into all sorts of problems for using celebrity photos. He was using images from sites that he hadn't got permission or paid them to do so. I think it was images from the World Entertainment News Network. You pay them something like $300 a month and you can go nuts and use as many images as you like. He didn't, but he went nuts anyway. But don't quote me on that.

Inspirepub wrote:

Bard,

You can search on sites like Flickr for photos with a Creative Commons licence.

What happens is that sites like MySpace and Facebook have a clause in their Ts&Cs which gives them non-exclusive rights to any content users upload. They then bundle up that content and sell it to stock photo sites. People buy the stock photos, modify them, and release them under a Creative Commons licence.

I got a completely gorgeous photo of Amy Lee under a Creative Commons licence - I just haven't had a Hub relevant to her to put it on, yet.

Photos sent out in press releases can generally be reproduced with attribution. I don't know the strict legalities on that, but the media seem to be OK with it, and they all do it.

My point is that it IS possible to be ethical and still have photos of celebrities, if you make a bit of an effort.

Jenny

Thanks for this helpful info, Jenny! If I ever decide to do any hubs on celebrities I will try looking where you suggested.
BTW Amy Lee added me to her top friends at Myspace once, which naturally made my day! I'm not sure if I am still there but I am on David Crosby's. I'll go and check!

darkside wrote:

Genereally speaking, the issue would be not so much the celebrities themselves, but the photographer who took the photo.

I know that Perez Hilton got into all sorts of problems for using celebrity photos. He was using images from sites that he hadn't got permission or paid them to do so. I think it was images from the World Entertainment News Network. You pay them something like $300 a month and you can go nuts and use as many images as you like. He didn't, but he went nuts anyway. But don't quote me on that.

Thanks for your response, Darkside! I had heard about Perez Hilton doing this and it's not as if he can't afford to pay! lol

Bard of Ely wrote:

Thanks for your response, Darkside! I had heard about Perez Hilton doing this and it's not as if he can't afford to pay! lol

There was another incident where he was using a piece of artwork for his logo. But yeah, he can afford to be doing the right thing. Either that or generally speaking, people can't afford to do the wrong thing.