With the exponential growth of photo sites like flickr, zooomr, and stock.xchng, there is a real need to raise the awareness of copyright laws and infringements. I ran across this photo on flickr entitled "Never Mind Your Copyright" (which I'm using appropriately under the Creative Commons some rights reserved). He writes a rant about this issue entitled "Freedom of expression?? Telling the truth??"on his blog. Copyright issues are becoming a very hot topic and will gain more and more press over the next few years. The photographer generated this image as a statement back to flickr about issues related to his photos being used in-appropriately.

Another related story reported by the Sydney Morning Herald states that a Texas family is taking Virgin Mobile phone company to court over their use of the girls image taken from a photo posted on flickr. While the photographer released the image under a sharing license, the company neglected to get a release from the family to use the image. This of course is a major no no.

It is easy to point fingers at large companies like Virgin Mobile and say shame, shame, for not following due process to get a release and offer some compensation to the model and most probably the photographer. In the case of the many other copyright infringements by bloggers who inappropriately re-use flickr and other photo sites, I believe these photo sites share culpability with the bloggers. There is more the photo sites could do to protect the photographers and to inform the users of the sites.

Some suggestions for photo sites to better inform users

• Post copyright guidelines more prominently on their site. If they are following the Creative Commons standards, they should re-state or link-out to those guidelines.
• Make the statements for use of a specific photo more obvious. This should not be considered the fine print, but rather a prominently placed tag next to the photo and download button. Of all the sites I've seen stock.xchng seems to do this the best.
• Raise the awareness through a media campaign. This would instill confidence in users that they would be in less danger of infringement.
• Provide usage examples to follow. More than stating the guidelines, educating users with visual use examples will help them properly cite borrowed media.

Most users are eager to follow the law and respect creative works. If media sites raise the level of awareness; the creators of the works, those re-using the works and the photo sites all win in the end.