Giving credit to the source of a copied work does not mean that the copier is not an infringer: It just means that he or she is not a plagiarist. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission to use it.

Source: http://www.sideroad.com/Legal_Advice/copyright-fair-use.html (good informative post on copyright)

And very true about going through email etc first, but sometimes that doesn’t work – trust me, some people don’t get the hint. Like hell, I’ll let someone steal something of mine… when they get paperwork in their mail they act really fast. Plus try telling a professional photographer that suing someone is costly. You will then have to pay for their lawyer fees :)

But sewing someone, anyone, is often very costly. More than likely you’ll go through the small things like an email/official letter rather than being throw into jail (unless this is serious copyright infringement to do harm), etc.

Either way – this entry was a lot of great advice! I don’t think a lot of people are fully aware of copyright infringement and blogs.

This is a great post, I wanted to blog about this too. Like you, I also noticed several blogs using images found on Google. As I was telling someone the other day, just because Google Images, Getty Images, etc allow you to search the images they own, or have collected, does not mean that you’re entitled to take them.

And even if you took an image you found on Google, edited it on Photoshop, it does not make you ‘free’ from the copyright. You are still violating copyright.

When writing a review you’re not claiming to own the image of the book, and such things are used as a means of marketing books anyway – if a cover can draw a person to it enough then they read your review then they may decide to purchase the book – where as they may not have heard of it otherwise. So in the instance of book covers, and the like as I said to Patty, you’re doing more of a service to the author/publisher by using the cover then you are harming them or stealing their revenue.

I’m hoping this is okay to do, because just reading about books, without seeing the accompanying visual links to the books can be boring. I like seeing the covers to books on other blogs.

Another time that photos are probably “lifted” without thinking about copyright infringement is for the use of icons/avatars for blogs. When going to sites like funny cats, or I can haz cheezburger ( I know I’m getting the names wrong), you can find the same photo with many different captions from quite a variety of people.