I don’t want this series to be all about taking things that aren’t yours and repurposing them as your own, but I have been seeing a lot of videos of people having to deal with their content being stolen and I thought it would be helpful to talk about it. When you start a blog, want to increase your social media presence, or maybe even want to start a youtube channel I cannot stress enough the importance of learning the basics of copyright laws. You don’t need to go crazy and learn everything, but here are 3 things as a designer, blogger, or youtuber that you should be aware of so you don’t break any copyright laws.
Avoid Google Images Traps
When I started my blog I was extremely paranoid that I was going to break one rule and owe someone a lot of money that I didn’t have so I started looking into copyright laws. What I noticed is how many people were actually breaking copyright laws because they thought you could just pull photos off of google images and use them on their websites, youtube channels, etc., but you actually can’t do that. Each image on Google Images was created by someone who put time and effort into that photo or design so you cannot use it unless you get permission from the creator of the image or the image has a license that is free for personal and commercial use. Even the smallest of designs can violate copyright laws so you really need to make sure the person is ok with you using their picture or better yet you can make your own designs with free software like Gimp or Inkscape.
Using Fonts
Font’s are not things we usually think of when making sure you are following copyright laws, but just like images on Google, someone creates those fonts and licenses them. You might want to use font’s from Microsoft Word or even Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop in your designs, but most if not all of those fonts require you to buy a license to use them in your designs. There are many websites that offer free fonts to use in your designs for personal and commercial use. Graphic Burger is one of my favorite resources for free fonts and other design tools/elements.
Dealing with Landmarks
I love designs that include anything travel related, but not all landmarks can be used in your designs without permission. For example, you aren’t allowed to sell pictures of the Eiffel tower at night. You are also not allowed to sell designs featuring the Seatle Space Needle without their permission unless it is featured in a skyline picture or design of the city. A quick google search will help you determine if you can use a certain landmark in your design and for the landmarks you are unsure about, call the organization that is responsible for running the landmark and ask.
So what should you do if your design is stolen . . .
A while back, I made a small image for my blog and posted it on Instagram. A little while later, I noticed that someone who had liked the image used it in their profile picture so I contacted the person and asked if they could take it down. They were really apologetic, and even though I knew they were not being 100% truthful about where they got the image, I let them continue to use the image which I kind of regret now. No matter how big or small your design is you worked hard on that design and you should fight for it to stay yours. So what should you do if your designs are stolen?
The first thing you should do is contact the person and ask them to take it down. It’s always good to start out calmly because you will have a better chance of having a good outcome. If that doesn’t work you might want to hire an intellectual property lawyer to get them to compensate you for your work or at the very least get them to take it down. If this is a small company or a singular person who stole your designs it might not be worth it to hire a lawyer or you might not have the money to hire a lawyer so instead, you should post about it on social media. Having the support of your social media audience can help you force the hand of the person who stole your design and should be your last effort to getting someone to stop using your designs.
As a designer, blogger, youtuber, etc. it is your responsibility to make sure you are following copyright laws so if you accidentally break copyright laws just own up to it and apologize. Your outcome will be a lot better if you do.
Have you had to deal with people stealing your designs? What did you do to get them to stop using your designs?
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