As a business owner, you know how valuable social media can be when trying to reach new customers. However, if you aren’t careful, the content or images you post may expose your business to legal issues.
Learning the copyright laws related to content and images is essential to avoid these problems.
Content and image copyright rules
You may not realize that when someone uploads a photo, it is copyrighted automatically. If you copy and post the image yourself, it may result in serious legal problems for your business.
While there’s a lot of advice available for people stating that if you create an attribution link to the original piece, you aren’t breaking any laws; however, this simply isn’t the case. In fact, copying someone else’s image or information and adding this link is simply committing copyright infringement and then telling the original owner about it.
How to protect your business from copyright infringement
To protect your business from potential liability, you must be smart about what and how you post online. One way to do this is by asking permission to use something from the creator. Another option is to embed posts on your blog or website of user-generated social media content. Instead of linking and attributing, you are showing the original post in its entirety. You can also use creative commons sources to find images that are copyright free.
Avoiding costly litigation and fines
You can protect your business from potential copyright infringement by asking permission before posting something online that belongs to someone else. If someone does accuse your business of copyright infringement, be sure you know what legal options you have. Remember, it’s much easier to prevent this situation with the tips above.