A puzzling situation

[lucia]

You could probably take some of your own photos to make puzzles.  Also, you can probably find photos, contact the photographer and ask them for a license. Some will let you do it for free or cheap.    I'm not hot shot photographer, but I took a picture of my clematis and posted here:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/fourth-of-july-clematis-haiku/

I later found it on a free wallpaper site. You know what happens if you use that on a puzzle? Nothing. Because I don't care.  You know what happens if you contact me, ask me if you can use it? I say: Sure. Go ahead.  For your records, you could then ask me to formalize that on a piece of paper. Heck, you could give me $5 if for some reason payment is required. Or, you could 'buy' the photo from me and we could make sure we copyrighted it so you would be safe. (This might be prudent if you are worried I really am just pretending I took the photo.)

People selling books figure out how to license photos and you can too. It's probably no where near the price Getty charges.

[PuzzleGuy]

Thanks, that would actually make a really nice puzzle. But in fact, I'm not making puzzles. I'm just retailing puzzles I buy from those who make (and license) them.

[SoylentGreen]

Getty's never going to get 1000 - 2000 dollars out of every person that places an advertisement for a product what contains a Getty-related image.
I mean, what's next?  Imagine if I own a field by a highway, and somebody rents part of that right of away from me to put a billboard on.
The advertising company pays Getty in order to use a licensed image on it.  Is Getty going to come after me for thousands?
Better not.

Just who would do business with a company like Getty?

S.G.

[lucia]

To me, that's like saying I cant post pictures of my car I have for sale.  Or that I can't take family pictures if one of these puzzle boxes happen to be in the background.

Or you can't show pictures of a t-shirt with licensed image on it when you advertise the t-shirt for sale.

[Moe Hacken]

To me, that's like saying I cant post pictures of my car I have for sale.  Or that I can't take family pictures if one of these puzzle boxes happen to be in the background.

Or you can't show pictures of a t-shirt with licensed image on it when you advertise the t-shirt for sale.

Oscar explained the first-use concept well; it would be silly to suggest you can't put a picture of a used t-shirt on a classified ad website without infringing because you're not copying the image, you're simply selling the shirt that you paid for to another end-user, so Lucia would quite correct about that.

Regarding the pretty flowers image that someone "stole" from Lucia, I think it's quite nice, and I think what Lucia says about her reaction to finding someone else using it without permission is totally credible.

I don't think anyone here would accuse Lucia of being a copyright troll!