Picture Sites – Staying Legal
It’s a tempting idea, fill up a site with a whole bunch of pictures of good looking people and slap on some ads and watch the traffic (and money) start rolling in. Celebrity picture sites are pretty common. The big problem is they’re on shaky legal ground as well.
Copyright law generally holds that the photographer owns the copyright on a photo. So, it’s doubtful that your favorite celeb will come to hunt you down and get you for infringement, but the photographers sure will. If they find a picture is being used without permission they will likely set a usage fee (whatever they want to set.) If it does go to court and they win we’re talking thousands of dollars per picture potentially.
So, play it safe and look to the stock photo distributors:
prphotos.com ($5/pic for blogs)
A google search for [celebrity stock photos] may turn up more possibilities as well.
If you’re not looking specifically for celebrity pictures, but landscapes or public officials, you might be interested to know that most of the pictures at the following site are Public Domain since they were created for the United States Government:
USA.gov/Topics/Graphics. (Some really nice material there!)
The Blog Herald has a post on 5 sources for free and legal images
picapp.com provides free embedded pictures for blogs. This isn’t really a choice for a celebrity photo gallery, but if you’re just doing celebrity news, it might be a good choice for you.
For any and all of these, make sure to read carefully the agreement and what a purchase may grant you the rights to do.
Here are a few others that look like possibilities… newscom.com
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