My Tuesday Rant

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

As some of you may know, I own a web dev  /hosting company, I go to great lengths to explain to my clients, the risks of getting images without a proper license as a courtesy to them. So yesterday I get an email with the subject line of "Photo from Google Images...attached" this is AFTER our discussion on proper licensing and AFTER they told me they found an image on dreamstime that they were going to purchase. The reason they grabbed the image from google??

1. I told them to read and understand the terms of the license, well dreamstime has a 12 page document concerning the terms, my client was to lazy to read the terms.

2. someone told them that google images was public domain, i guess they just ignored the "Images may be subject to copyright." statement on google.

I proceeded to tell the client I would happily use the image, provided they read, sign and return  my hold harmless agreement...

End of rant..

[Matthew Chan]

This is going to be one of those things that every web developer will eventually face. Right now, it is the "wild west" but as more web developers have clients get nailed by the extortion letters, they would be wise to follow your course of action.

I am very selective on who I do web work for and I insist on a LOT of control.  I can't afford to have someone else's stupidity hurt or impair me.  I have more than enough stupidity on my own to hurt myself!  LOL.

Matthew