Well, not really but there is more to it than you think. For those of you that don’t know, copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something. In this particular post, the examples have to do with photos and articles.

I am going to out on a limb and say that you most likely have a Twitter account or a Facebook account. I will also go out on a limb and say that at some point you shared an article that you found interesting and shared it on one of your social media accounts. Did you ever think that you could be at fault for copyright infringement? Probably not, and you should be fine because the person who originally posted the article or photo will be the one at fault. This seems like this happens a lot, why don’t we hear more about these copyright infringements? In the article titled Does Sharing A Link To Online Content Amount To Copyright Infringement?  Justin Goldman, who works for Getty Images, took a photo of Tom Brady and other parties tweeted it out without giving him proper credit. Another example would be The Washington Post and just about every other news source uses President Trump’s tweets. It seems pretty simple, give the person or publisher credit and you don’t have to worry about them coming after you. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has some different views on this subject. They ruled that if you use sharing links with copyrights for profit may infringe copyright laws. Basically, they are saying that the person who publishes the work better make sure that it is done legally or else they could be at risk of copyright infringement.

The drama doesn’t end here. Now we have a photographer going after somebody big and that somebody is CBS. In the article Photographer Sues CBS for Copyright Infringement, CBS Sues Back we have photographer Jon Tannen telling writer Alex Gleitman to take down his post including Tannen’s photo even though Gleitman says he gives him credit. He then decided to sue CBS and CBS countersued him for $150,000 for being a hypocrite for using copyrighted still frame without permission. This is one of those situations where you look and just hope they stop because you are embarrassed for them.

My thoughts on all of this are why don’t people give credit where credit is due? If people did that, we wouldn’t have these problems. Also, why don’t you just check to make sure what you are doing is legal. Is it too much to ask? Maybe so but, my dad always said, any job worth doing, is worth doing well. Don’t steal that or I will sue you.