“Give credit where credit is due.”

The designers of this flow-chart are credited along the right margin. ↑

“GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE.” says the chart…

Seems like a fair statement, but somehow folks still don’t think twice about using other people’s images without proper attribution.

Obviously the image I just posted is not mine. It belongs to a couple of designers. Their names are written along the lower right margin.

So I was prompted to post this after a friend on a growing social media site found out one of his pictures was used for a premium blog theme sale, without his permission.

To add insult upon insult, he was neither credited nor compensated for the use of his picture. Note that the premium theme in question sold over 700 times for $35 (each time). You can do the math.

You can see the photo and theme here (sorry, dead link since posted; the photographer and the developer were in talks over it as I wrote this).

Obviously the sale of the theme was not for the photo itself, however to measure the impact of the photo on successive sales is beyond me. All I know is that if Tommy Lee Jones found out his image was used for Boss canned coffee without his consent nor compensation, saying that Boss only sells coffee will not keep the lawyers away.

Unfortunately, my friend is not famous, and will probably get nothing out of the infringement. Under amicable terms he might get some free advertisement, but that’s all.

“What can I do to avoid this?” The answer is, “Nothing.”

But you can make it more official. US law more or less protects stuff like this without you having to file paperwork. You can set your permissions in some photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

I always close my posts here with a link to The Creative Commons (below). You can get some ideas there. You can also watermark your work, but there are ways to remove that, too, even on an iPhone.

If you liked what you saw or read, please +1 me or share below ☺

I believe in The Creative Commons.