Photo by Zscout370 at Wikicommons

Bloggers need to be aware of copyright issues. In fact, you need to be very careful. I’ve learned the hard way. I’ve found pictures mainly by googling the topic I’m writing about and then looking at the image search. Well, I found out that is the wrong thing to do. I’ve been contacted by the artist of a picture that I used and if I can’t get it to quit showing in Google’s cache image search by today, I will be added to a list of people this person is taking legal action against.

Last Friday, I deleted the photo in the post, as well as in another post from my group blog. I’ve deleted the photo on my hard drive and downloads. I have deleted the photo in Google+ cache and in Picasa Albums (all google products linked to blogger) I have even sent Google a request to remove the photo from their image search. But I don’t know that it will be done by today.

Since this happened, I went through all my photos in my blogs, hard drive, Picasa, Google, etc and deleted ALL photos that I do not have rights to. I am trying to do what is right.

All this has got me thinking, what about Pinterest? What about You Tube? If it is not legal to use other people’s pictures, then how do these sites keep track of the legalities? I don’t get it.

Another thing that is bugging me. As I was researching how to get that photo completely deleted, I realized how interconnected things are. Blogger is connected to Google, and Picasa, and Google+. I had no idea Google+ kept a cache of all the pictures I use in my blog posts that I post in Google+. It’s crazy. And it makes me just a bit reticent to blog.

Anyway, just wanted to share what I’ve been learning….the hard way.

p.s. The picture is no longer showing up! Thank goodness!