WordPress encourages use of photos on every blog post. They won’t use your blog in their featured section without a photo, as a matter of fact. This means that lots of bloggers grab photos from wherever and put them onto their blog without too much consideration about where the images came from. Because they don’t make money from their blog, aren’t selling the image, or credit the source, they think they’re safe.
You may notice that my blog has very few photos. This means that I will not become a featured blogger, but hopefully it means I won’t get sued for using material that doesn’t belong to me. I have endeavoured to use only my own photos, public domain photos (OLD), or book covers on reviews which I am trusting are fair use.
However, a lot of bloggers are out there innocently using images, blithely unaware that they are infringing on copyright. Roni Loren was one. She used a photo, and was sued over it. Here is her very interesting blog post about what she learned. Thanks Roni for helping us to know what the dangers are. I will now check through my blog and make sure there isn’t anything there that slipped through my paranoia filters in a moment of laziness!
Shawn L. Bird 