Paul F Burgueño

Are there any rights to the images from the Internet?

A few days ago I met at the awards Citizen Journalist with Llaneza Paloma, a lawyer and now paying around your blog I find the following comment :

David - A question: Using images from a website that can not be bought exclusively by them but are hitting a lamppost on another website of your property even though the images are not hosted on your server is illegal or if the images are spread both through the internet is understood that there was no duty on it.

Well you see, David, each case is different. Here I will sketch the basic lines of Spanish law to respect, not an opinion or legal advice applicable to specific cases. And I remember one time good advice is better than a monetary claim in the future. Here we go:

The publication of works (pictures, drawings, photographs ...) via the Internet meets one of the author's economic rights, which is the public communication in the form of provision of Article 20 of the Copyright Law. This means that the author, or that person you have been given this option, they are exercising their right to put their work on the Internet, but, of course, is not forsaking all others (reproduction, distribution, etc. ) so you have to ask permission to use.

We can therefore say that the provision of photographs over the Internet never implies the abandonment of any rights that the law recognizes the author about his work.

I therefore recommend not under any circumstances use the photographs from Google Images or other similar search engines.

If you want to access high-resolution images, "free" of almost all rights of the author, you can use today that provide services such as:

• SXC (which is used to illustrate this blog)
• Creative Commons (here there is everything but very disorganized)
• Morquefile (I have not ever tasted)
• CNICE (for nonprofit educational purposes)
• Yotophoto (under construction)
• PD Photo (thousands of pictures ready to use)

In any case, you are always aware of specific licenses that each page you specify for the works it houses. Similarly, I remind you that you must always respect the author's moral rights (distribution, paternity, integrity and other rights under article 14 LPI, listed in the first report).

And about your question about the option to embed a picture in a way that is not stored on your server but is displayed from the server of the author (come on, the "iframe" whole life), because I'm afraid you could not do so. It is true that you are downloading the photo, or you're storing, or get on Internet ... but you're communicating to the public without having obtained this right in advance of its author. Plus, you're wrong and benefit of the bandwidth employed by the author and the photo is loaded from your server every time you reload the page and update their objects. Ultimately, if you use an image, make sure you have the license. Better a post no post no rights image.

In short, yes there are rights on the images you find on the Internet.