How To Use Celebrity Images On Blog Legally

Where to Find a Free Celebrity Picture for Your Next Blog Post

…without getting slapped by copyright law

Actress Jennifer Lawrence in a red dress — Jennifer Lawrence at the 83rd Academy Awards Red Carpet. Photo by RedCarpetReport, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Copyright lawyers have this joke: "A picture is worth a thousand words, but a copyright-protected picture is only worth three words: cease and desist."

I didn't laugh when I first read it because I am a chicken when it comes to taking legal risks.

But, as a writer, I still have to use images in every article to support my storytelling and to reach my audience. And for my recent post, I needed pictures of five entrepreneurial celebrities: Ben Horowitz, Gary Vee, Seth Godin, Cal Newport, and Darren Hardy.

I could gra b some pictures from Instagram, Twitter, or a Newspaper and then splash them into my article. But my inner chicken was clucking me to do some research into copyright beforehand.

Look, I am not a lawyer, and none of this is legal advice. But here are the two striking things I discovered.

First, the consequences of infringing on someone else's copyright are not a joke. Charges can go as high as $150,000 for each violation, excluding all attorney fees and court costs. In extreme cases, the copyright violator can face jail time.

Now, I haven't heard of any writer who had to go to jail for illegally posting an image of a celebrity, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful.

Second, I discovered easy, free, and legal ways to reuse celebrity photos. I will demonstrate them later.

But first, let's start by busting a few myths about copyright.

Myth 1: I Am Safe Because I Attributed the Source (Facebook/Newspaper/etc.)

It is tempting to reuse images you find on the internet. The problem is most of the visuals out there are protected by copyright.

Copyright is "a federal law that protects original works of authorship. A work of authorship includes literary, written, dramatic, artistic, musical, and certain other types of works."

Copyright applies as soon as someone creates an original piece of artwork. This happens regardless of whether a professional camera or a smartphone was used.

The celebrity's picture may not even belong to the celebrity herself, but to the photographer who took the photo. They took it, They own it.

What does this mean for us?

As writers and bloggers, we should not take any image from the internet and reuse it even if we attribute the original image and provide the link to the original. Unfortunately, a mere attribution does not free us from copyright violation.

But luckily, there are legal and free alternatives. So read on.

Myth 2: I Made Changes to the Image, So It Belongs to Me Now

Unfortunately, modifying a copyrighted image does not automatically transfer copyrights to you. Moreover, you are making yourself potentially liable once you reuse a copyrighted image.

So any changes you apply to the image, such as adding a quote next to the face of your favorite entrepreneur, does not relieve you from potential liability.

Fortunately, there is an easy and free way to legally modify copyrighted images so you can reuse them in your blog post. I will explain how to do this later.

Myth 3: The Image Doesn't Have a Copyright-Sign, so I Am Safe

Most images published after 1989 do not require the prominent encircled "c" — the copyright sign — to indicate that the image has copyright. Copyright attaches automatically at the time the photographer hits the shutter button on their camera.

Sara Hawkins from Blog Law recommends the following: assume that every image you find online is copyrighted. This includes every image on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Myth 4: I Will Be OK Because I Am Using Images According to Fair Use

Fair use is one of the most complex subjects in copyright law.

We often assume that it's ok to reuse someone else's material in our articles as long as we only reuse it a little bit, and we attribute the source. However, that's something related to plagiarism, which is different from copyright.

If you're using the image to pretty up your blog, then this might not fall under copyright fair use. Instead, you may want to try one of the safer bets I suggest in the following sections.

Ask and You May Receive

Let's assume you find a suitable celebrity image on Facebook or Google. The looks, the angle, and the expression on the image fit perfectly to your article's message. You crave to use this photo in your blog.

The simplest solution is to ask the photographer if you can use the image in your post. There is a chance that they will say yes. However, they may request an attribution so that others know the photographer's name. In this case, you should include the text "photo courtesy of," and then add their name.

Photographers have all the reasons to say no, but the experience shows that most will agree.

However, if they do say no, that is a signal for you to move on and look elsewhere. So read on if the above option fails. There is a fantastic alternative.

Avoid Copyright Headache With CreativeCommons.org

Sounds simple, but millions of high-quality images are available for free without having to worry about violating copyright.

The thing is, many photographers are willing to give away their work for free. Consider this altruism or a smart marketing move to expose their names to the public. In any case, these images can be legally reused, modified, and shared without paying a single cent.

You can find a myriad of such images on CreativeCommons.org, Wiki Commons, and Flickr.com. These sites collect images that creators have distributed with blogger-friendly creative commons licenses.

I typically select these licenses in my search filter on CreativeCommons.org:

License CCO
License Public Domain Mark
License BY
License BY-SA (Share-alike)
License BY-SA-ND (note: you can use these images, but you must not modify them)

I choose them because they allow me to reuse images for commercial purposes. But at this point, we can argue whether blogging is considered commercial use or editorial use.

A blogger can make money through a partner program and promote their coaching business on their blog. On the other hand, the same blogger covers stories and expresses themself artistically in writing, which would constitute editorial use.

Again, I am not a lawyer so I don't know which of the above is the ultimate truth. But selecting commercial use licenses seems like a safe bet because it allows both editorial and commercial uses.

Licenses With No Strings Attached: CC0 and Public Domain Mark

Licenses CCO and Public Domain Mark are most generous because "you can copy, modify, distribute, and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission."

In this case, images belong to the public domain so they have no copyrights attached to them. So you can reuse them even without attribution. However, it is a common and friendly practice to mention the author despite the freedom to use their images.

Although you can reuse public domain images freely, there are some minor restrictions. For example, you should avoid any endorsement by the author or the person depicted. Don't make it look like the celebrity supports your views and opinions.

Licenses You Need to Attribute: By, By-Sa, By-Sa-Nd

Licenses BY, BY-SA (Share Alike), and BY-SA-ND (No Derivatives) allow you to reuse, copy, and share images for commercial purposes too. However, they require you to attribute the image every time you use it.

CreativeCommons.org makes it easy to attribute its images. The site already provides an attribution text with links that you can copy and paste next to your image. See how I did that for the photo of Seth Godin below?

So why are there three different licenses if they all require the same attribution in our articles? The difference becomes apparent if you plan to modify the images. Read on because rules apply before you can use a modified picture in your post.

How to Use Modified Celebrity Photos

Modifying a celebrity photo to create your own title image is a popular trend among bloggers nowadays. A photoshopped portrait gives your article an additional creative touch so it shines amongst all other articles which use stock images only. But can you modify a creative commons image without infringing its copyright?

The good news is that nearly all licenses mentioned above allow you to make modifications: CC0, Public Domain Mark, BY, and BY-SA. The only license that prohibits any modifications is the BY-SA-ND (no derivatives) license.

When you modify CC0 and Public Domain Mark images, you can distribute them without any attribution to the original. Other licenses demand attribution.

Let's say I want to crop a BY or a BY-SA image of Seth Godin — a marketing and entrepreneurship guru — for my blog post. Now let's learn how to attribute my modified image.

The license text of BY reads: "To use the image legally, you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made." So besides attribution, we also need to describe the changes we made to the image.

First, I am going to add the attribution text provided by CreativeCommons.org by simply copying and pasting it as caption text under my image. Then I will add the description of my changes at the end of the attribution: "cropped from original."

"Seth Godin" by Joi is licensed under CC BY 2.0 | Cropped from original

The BY-License even allows me to attach a different license to my customized image. For example, if I wanted to prohibit others from further modifying my creation, I could license it under BY-SA-ND. However, I tried to keep things simple, so I used the original attribution text in my caption.

You can learn more about licensing your creations on Wikipedia.

License BY-SA is similar to BY but has a restriction on how you share your modifications. SA stands for Share-Alike. This means that "if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original."

In other words, you must label a modified BY-SA image as a BY-SA image in your caption.

Exotic Solutions For Obtaining Photographs

If everything above fails, you can refer to the following solutions to obtain your celebrity images:

Buy an image from a stock site like Gettyimages. However, be prepared to cash out a few hundred dollars to obtain a single image license.
Embed images from Gettyimages or Twitter. This is an elegant and free way to place images in a blog. However, there is a downside: A common embed service Embedly does not list Getty as a provider. As I tried pasting the link in this article, I only got a small thumbnail of the image, which does not qualify as a title image. But it's worth to watch this space because Gettyimages is not cheap.
Take your own photographs of the celebrity. This can be a feasible option if you have access to the whereabouts of the celebrity. Especially, conferences and shows offer a great chance to take some unique shots for your next blog post masterpiece.

Do You Need a Celebrity's Consent?

With all that has been said about copyright, there is one thing left.

Think about this: Would you like to see your portrait on a highway billboard without being asked for permission? Most wouldn't. Therefore, people who can be identified on a photograph must give their consent for public usage of their images. This consent is called "model release."

By the way, the same rule applies to private property, landmarks, and trademarks.

But wait. How am I going to get consent from a celebrity? Isn't this awfully complicated? Yes, but fortunately, a model release is not always required.

Jim Harmer, a lawyer and photographer, provides a good explanation in his blog:

"Generally, a model release is only required if the way the photo is published makes it seem that the person in the photo endorses the product, service, or organization. A model release would almost always be required if the use is for advertising."

Placing a picture of Seth Godin on the front cover of my eBook or Magazine may well constitute a use for advertisement. A reasonable person would infer that Seth Godin endorses my eBook. However, "a model release is not needed for publishing the photo as news, or for artistic or editorial expression."

Pixabay also suggests that, in general, posting an image on a blog does not require a model release because it would represent editorial usage.

Magazines publish numerous articles with pictures of famous people every day. Do they request a model release every time they post a story? According to photographer Dan Heller, "magazine and newspaper stories about people (famous or not) do not require releases for the photos because the article is merely an expression of free speech."

When I write an article, I express my opinion and therefore need to use a relevant image to highlight my expression. So when I share my story on what I learned from the books of Seth Godin, I may just get away with using his photo as my "news, artistic, and editorial expression."

Putting It All Together

The truth is: articles with images get 94% more views. Besides, what would be your story about Warren Buffet's latest investment secret without his photograph splashed on the front of your article?

Finding a photograph of Warren Buffet on the internet is a piece of cake. But getting caught violating image copyright is easy too. Image recognition software has become so advanced that repositories monitor the web for infringing images automatically.

Copyright violation is not foreign to a writer. One writer shared his story of how he got caught. This time, he got away with an $800 fine and a black eye.

In the end, infringement isn't worth it because there are millions of free images at our disposal:

Sites like CreativeCommons.org, wikicommons.org, and flickr.com distribute high-quality photos under blogger-friendly licenses. But always check the license before you use or modify the image.
Alternatively, ask for permission from the photographer to reuse the photo in your post. This option works more often than you may think.

Finally, when dealing with people on the image, Jim Harmer recommends to "never present the photo in a way that could make someone think that the pictured person endorses your business."

Copyright law is complex, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't understand the basics. Because in the end, it is a writer's responsibility to make sure the image with depicted celebrities, trademarks, property, etc., does not infringe any rights.

Oh, did I mention that I am not a lawyer? Because this article is only the expression of my opinion. You should consult with a licensed attorney before making critical legal decisions or drafting contracts.