What to Worry

If you use an image in an inappropriate way, such as not following the rules of the CC license, you could get into a lot of troubles. In this section I will explain the three types of trouble you could get into.

Firstly, if you use images in extreme ways you could hurt others. This is rather about what you use the image for rather than its copyright but, this is very important so I will explain anyways. Some images on the Internet are grotesque or made to make fun of others. If you choose to use these images your audience may get disturbed. For example, according to Republican American, a multimedia news delivery organization, five high school students were arrested and charged for sharing sexually inappropriate images. Before using or posting images for your projects be sure that they are acceptable.

Secondly, this only goes for people who are trying to design something but, if you use too many images made by others your design becomes unoriginal. Even if the images are CC0 and you can use them freely, if there is too much of it the design would look the same as other designs and would be unappealing. I experienced this at my school's presentation class as all the groups used the same images for the slides and none of the groups stood out. Originality is very important and relying too much on others resources can make this disappear.

Thirdly, and most importantly if you use images without respecting the rights it holds, you would be committing copyright infringement. The copyright of an image (unless they are using CC0) belongs to its creator. Breaking the restrictions of these copyrights could get you fined. For example, according to CRIC a group that is working to introduce and explain copyright, in 1999, a foundation was sued for using images that went against the rules of copyright in their magazine. The foundation lost the trial and ended up paying the price. Making presentations and sites takes a lot of time and breaking the restrictions could result in all the work becoming worthless so, you must be careful.

Sources

“Q&A court cases| what would you do？ | copyrightQ&A | Public interest corporation Copyright information center CRIC.” n.d. Accessed February 23, 2018. http://www.cric.or.jp/qa/shigoto/sigoto11_qa.html.

“Students Charged with Sharing Explicit, Inappropriate Images.” 2018. Republican-American (blog). February 22, 2018. http://www.rep-am.com/news/2018/02/22/students-charged-with-sharing-explicit-inappropriate-images/.