Free images for commercial use without link or attribution
Where do we find really free images on the web?
What we need, are royalty-free photos and cliparts without the
requirement of attributing the original author and without the necessity
of backlinks. On these terms, I'll present you my favorite two
websites, one for cliparts - Clker.com - and one for photos -
Pixabay.com:
Pixabay.com is a new plattform, specifically offering lots of quality photos, all of which under the new Creative Commons Licence CC0,
which enables the usage of these pics for virtually arbitrary
application (also commercial use), without attributing the original
author or linking back to the source. Great, heh!?
Clker.com
offers a huge collection of free, high-quality and resizable cliparts.
For any imaginable topic one finds loads of suitable comics, icons, etc.
Clker does not offer photos, but cliparts are just as valuable, both
for web-designers and for Lensemasters.
Illegal use of photos
Using images obtained from Google image search can be really dangerous.
Fines for illegal use of images and photos can easily be as high as
10.000 US$ (wow!). Most image databases on the web offer "licence-free"
images, which in most cases is actually only a keyword to attract
visitors from Google. In general, all major image collections promoting
free stock photos do at least require to link back to the source and/or
to mention the original author, in accordance with Creative Commons Licence CC-By.
However, in many cases we as web-developers or authors are technically
not able to include the source in the obliged manner. Inside of text
paragraphs, it is difficult to place a subtitle below an image, or e.g.
preview images - also used on HubPages, Squidoo or PageWizz - in some cases violate the CC-By
licence.