I guess most of you should know about copyright. If you don't and you've already written some articles and posted them here including some fancy pictures I would strongly recommend to read this article bevor you start your next post.
Copyright? What's that?
In general, you can say that copyright protects the works created by companies or individuals. These works can be for example pictures, music or literary works. But also, intangible things like ideas or inventions.
So, these are the basics and a lot of people posting on Steemit are acting correctly. But every day I can see a lot of postings which are definitely not within legal bounds. That's because there seem to be some misunderstandings about the correct usage particularly with pictures. I would like to talk about the most common ones.
References not enough
So, you're looking for some pictures for your article on Google Images. The perfect one is found very soon and added to your article. Just quickly add the source not to violate any rights and you're good to go. Correct? No!
In general, you'll always have to ask others before using their content. It's nice to mention the source from but it won't give you the guarantee not to violate any rights.
Copyright protected material
It's not always easy to recognize if material is copyright protected or not and who's the owner of the copyright. In case you're not sure you should always ask before using other people's content.
Free material
But for most people it might be too stressful to ask every time before using the work of someone else as it will take some time to get an answer and in the end there is no guarantee that license will be accorded.
For this reason, there are websites which offer royalty-free material. One of the best known for pictures is pixabay.
But even on pages like this you should be careful because royalty-free doesn't mean license-free! You should take a look at this website's terms and conditions.
There will be some providers that will allow you to use their content for free but would like to be mentioned as authors within your list of references. An example for this is a website offering audio data for free called Audionautix.
What am I allowed to do with this material?
You should make yourself also clearly if the material you prefer is free for commercial or only for non-commercial purposes. If you are aiming to make profits with your work, you're always acting commercial even if you haven't made any profit with it.
You should also collect information if you are allowed to edit the material of if you are only allowed to use it in the way you obtained it.
So-called Creative Commons can give you a hint under which licenses you are allowed to use specific material. It may be too much to talk about this topic as well. You should read about Creative Commons on Wikipedia.
Why's Steemit especially critical then?
Well, it wouldn't be the first time that some copyright owner sues some other person who violated his rights. And when an action for injunction is the consequence, material on a common page can easily be deleted.
But how can you handle that within the blockchain? Yes, I mean the great blockchain where content can't be censored but also can't be deleted. Will you then be convicted to pay a monthly compensation for example?
To be honest I have tried to get some information on this topic but at the moment it seems that nobody cares about this question yet. This may change some day when the first sues will affect people…
So, my friends be careful when using works from others. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to be a juridical counseling in any way. The statements I made here did only contain some general knowledge I obtained within time. That's why I can't take any responsibility on completeness and correctness.
Picture Sources:
pixabay