Google Changes Images Policy

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From Nicholas C. Rossis:

As Shannon Connellan explains on Mashable, Google recently made a subtle change to its image search — but one that may have big repercussions for copyright. The company has now removed the “view image” button from image search, which will make it trickier to save copyrighted images directly. Once a direct link to a high-resolution version of your chosen image, the “view image” button was a concern for photographers, publishers and stock image sites alike, as it allowed people to access a high-res version of the image without visiting the source site.

With Google’s elimination of the tool, you’ll still be able to visit the source of the image with the remaining “visit” button, but it’s this additional step that’s hopefully meant to make people less likely to steal copyrighted material — seeing images in their original context could be a red flag for users.

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This change was probably at the behest of Getty Images, as it comes in the wake of Google’s new multi-year global licensing partnership with the company, enabling Google to use Getty’s content within its various products and services. Interestingly enough, the partnership was developed after Getty filed a complaint against Google in 2016, accusing the company of anti-competitive practices within Google Images and “distorting search results in favour of its own services” — thus creating less of a need to visit source stock websites likes Getty to download the original image.

“Because image consumption [in Google Images] is immediate, once an image is displayed in high-resolution, large format, there is little impetus to view the image on the original source site,” Getty’s press statement read.

Link to the rest at Nicholas C. Rossis and thanks to Suzie for the tip.

PG says one if the distinctions in fair use between text and a photo is that a text excerpt that includes some of the interesting/relevant points in the OP like PG uses for most of his posts that reference of other sites is much easier to create than using an excerpt from a photo.

For example, here is the left foot of Michaelangelo’s famous sculpture of David:

It’s a very nice foot, but doesn’t convey either a sense of the entire work or its emotional impact. In fact, PG has not seen any photograph with the impact of the original statue.

The entire statue can be viewed at the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Italy (and is worth the trip by itself). As of the date of this post, you can take non-flash photos of the statue.

As an alternative to attempting to use copywrite-protected photos on your website, here are some alternatives, including one included in the OP.

Websites with Royalty-Free Images:

Here are the four big sources of royalty-free images of which PG is aware:

• Unsplash – https://unsplash.com/
• Pexels – https://www.pexels.com/
• Pixabay – https://pixabay.com/
• Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

While PG has found excellent images on each site, the capabilities of the search engines varies from site to site. He suggests trying all four to see which one(s) suit you the best.

Each of these websites has terms of service, however, which you will want to quickly scan before including an image in a commercial product such as a book. For example, here’s a link to Pixabay’s Terms.

You find lots of reference to Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons is an organization that has created a series of IP licenses that creators can use to control the use of their creations with licenses that include standard terms and are relatively easy to understand. The licenses have numbers to clearly distinguish between one another.

In fact, you can perform searches on Google for images that are free for use under Creative Commons Licenses – See https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/29508?hl=en  In PG’s experience, you’ll find the largest number of total images via Google, but you may end up with a lot of amateur quality which is much less common in Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay.

Here are features of each Creative Commons License regardless of other terms in the license:

• Every Creative Commons license requires giving appropriate credit. It’s important to understand this, and to also know what this phrase “appropriate credit” means.
• A Creative Commons licensor (the person granting you the license) may not revoke your license so long as you are following the terms of the license. This is often a sticking point because many do not provide credit as required.
• There are 6 Creative Commons license and they apply worldwide.
• The license, once granted, lasts as long as the copyright on the work so long as the license is used properly.

Here’s an example of a broad Creative Commons License

For example,

CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) 

Public Domain Dedication

No Copyright

The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. See Other Information below.

Other Information:

• In no way are the patent or trademark rights of any person affected by CC0, nor are the rights that other persons may have in the work or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
• Unless expressly stated otherwise, the person who associated a work with this deed makes no warranties about the work, and disclaims liability for all uses of the work, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.
• When using or citing the work, you should not imply endorsement by the author or the affirmer.

 

Here’s a different Creative Commons License with some additional conditions:

(CC BY-NC 3.0 US)

Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States

You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

Following is a more-detailed description of each of the main license types that demonstrates some of the differences between them.

Licensing types

PG says there are lots of ways to find excellent visual content without violating the creator’s rights if you spend a few minutes searching for it.

And here are a few photos available for reuse that PG found using Google Advance Image Search:

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