Adsense, Copyright, and Fair Use

Are Google Images Free to Use?

Google Images are not images owned by Google, so they give no permission for the use of images shown on Google Images.  Google images is nothing more than a search engine that indexes images that can be found on the web.

That does not mean you have permission to use them. Every image is protected by copyright unless it's listed in the Public Domain (must say so); or unless it's licensed as Creative Commons (in which case you must follow the licensing terms) or, unless the copyright holder (ie: the owner of the image - the artist, the photographer, the creator) has listed it as free to use.  The same would hold true for any image search engine (like yahoo or bing) - since they do not own the images, they cannot grant you usage rights for the images. The only one who can give you authorization to use the images is the owner/creator of the image.

And there are, in fact, quite number of websites that offer free images for bloggers and website owners, incuding some of the more popular micro-stock sites (Shutterstock to name at least one). They require you to sign up and you are restricted to certain uses and to the images they offer weekly/daily for free, but they are images produced by professional photographers. There really is no excuse for using images without permission when many sites offer them for free. Even Flickr has a multitude of images licensed for use under Creative Commons. You just have to read the appropriate licenses and follow them.

Lots of people don't really understand copyright law very well, which isn't surprising because it's pretty complicated. Further reading (below) includes answers from a lawyer; bloggers who have been sued for using other's images without permission; and famous people or companies sued for not acquiring permission.

http://www.legalcentral.com/blog/can-i-be-sued-for-using-other-peoples-pictures-on-my-website/
http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/7/20/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-for-using-pics-on-your-blog.html
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/How_using_Google_Images_can_cost_you_8000_14912.aspx
http://tamaratattles.com/2013/01/11/housewives-blogger-sued-by-new-jersey-media-group-for-copyright-violation/
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130913/sarah-palin-and-sarahpac-sued-over-use-copyrighted-911-photo
http://fstoppers.com/photographer-sues-celebrity-blogger-perez-hilton-for-copyright-infringement
http://blog.seattlepi.com/timothymccormack/2012/01/26/copyright-infringement-letter-for-images-on-your-website/
http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/copyrightlaws/a/Can-I-Ignore-A-Getty-Settlement-Demand-Letter.htm

Also note that although Fair Use does exist in the Copyright Law (US), there is no guarantee that your use of the image would be considered Fair Use, and AdSense may not consider Fair Use at all if you must file an appeal because your account was disabled. Adsense's copyright policies don't really mention Fair Use, and saying that Fair Use gives you authorization to use images/text/video clips is more likely to fail with Adsense.

One other thing to note: using a screenshot of someone's image is not really an option unless you have permission from the image owner, so it's really not that much different than having to acquire permission for the image itself. Screenshot use may be dependent on the actual use of the image, but if you simply open someone else's image to full size, and take a screenshot, then try to use that as a free wallpaper or to sell it, or use it as your own ... the answer to that is that this would just as likely get you sued as using the actual image.

If you were using a screenshot of a page that contained an image, but the primary focus isn't the image, you may possibly get away with fair use, if your use of the screenshot falls under fair use, but it isn't something I would rely on.

Fair Use

http://www.copyright.gov/laws/
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.

• The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
• The nature of the copyrighted work
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission."

So even if you think your use falls under the "Fair Use" part of the Copyright law, if the image owner doesn't think so, you may find yourself in court facing a lawsuit, or settling the claim by paying the required fees. If you want to fight the claim, then you'd be required to face the court. Because that's how it works. The cost of a court case and a lawyer is probably far more than the value provided by using the image, or paying to license an image from a stock site. Today, micro stock sites license images at an affordable rate, sometimes only $1 an image. If you can't afford that, you can't afford to go to court over a Fair Use case.

Celebrity & Famous People

For "famous persons", there's a clause that says celebrities have the right to earn from promotional images of themselves ... well, something to that effect (it's called the Right of Publicity). Images of most celebrities are licensed by someone, so whether it's their agent, or the studio, or themselves, they shouldn't be reproduced without permission.

In cases like magazines where celebrity images appear, it can be handled in a lot of ways. The magazine pays for the photoshoot and copyright ownership, and famous person signs a release so the magazine can use it. But what happens after the magazine uses it depends on what the release said that was signed by the celebrity. Some are exclusive use only, some may not be, but only the entity that holds the right to the model release and copyrights has the right to provide the authorization for use of the image. And not all magazines may arrange their own photoshoots, some may license some of the images in their magazines from stock sites, like Getty, in which case even the magazine must comply with the license terms they paid Getty for.

If an image is issued by the copyright holder or representative (authorized) as a press package, it would likely contain licensing that allows the image to be used in only certain ways, so if you rely on press releases and publishing packages for celebrity images, you must be sure your use of the image (ie: the way you intend to use it) would fit within their guidelines of use or licensing.

It's pretty complicated.

http://www.ehow.com/about_6461739_celebrity-copyright-law.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

Celebrity Rights: http://nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/11021/1/JIPR%2016(1)%207-16.pdf

Fan Fiction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction

Adsense's Thoughts on Copyright

Equally important for Adsense publishers (or perhaps more so) is AdSense's own policy on copyright, which essentially says if you don't own it, and don't have permission to use it ... just don't use it. The bigger issue is sites which are composed solely of someone else's text, or someone else's images/videos. As well as violating Adsense's own copyright policy, these sites would also violate Webmaster Guidelines which can be a reason for seeing ad serving disabled to your site, or might result in your entire account being disabled if you have multiple sites that all use contents from someone else.




Both Adsense and Webmaster Guidelines expect you to use an image appropriately. When you use an image belonging to someone else, you either acquire permission or make sure of it's free use licensing. You also use it to illustrate your own original contents, you don't use them as the sole purpose for the existence of your website. In other words, your use of images needs to be accompanied by your own useful and original contents. Your site shouldn't consist entirely of images/text/videos you don't own, or didn't create.

by J.Gracey Stinson

Invalid Clicks? How, Where, Why?

An excellent place for most new publishers to begin understanding policy and issues that may cause invalid clicks is the "AdSense Policies: A Beginner's Guide" page in the AdSense Help Center, and well worth taking the time to read for some established publishers. You might be surprised at some of what you'll find on this page.

One of the first things AdSense mentions in the "Clicks and Impressions" section is that they monitor these very carefully. There's  an unspoken idea there, and if you think about it long enough you might understand what that hidden message is.

If AdSense is monitoring clicks and impressions "very carefully", it's probably a good idea for you to also monitor these yourself - "very carefully".

Monitoring the activity on your website or blog is one of the ways you can help to head off a lot of ad clicks that AdSense may consider to be invalid. You monitor site activity using Google Analytics, and any third-party site analyzer that records IP addresses, visitor activity, and times, and if you pay for webhosting, most hosts will have some sort of server logs for your site. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with some of these - simply do a web search for website statistics or counters and read through some of those available. Select one that fits your needs and learn how it works, and put the necessary codes on your site. Keep copies of logs or statistics, because these will be useful in analyzing your site and monitoring your traffic.

When you analyze your stats there are things you should watch for:

•  one visitor clicking multiple ads in one visit (1 or 2 ads, probably okay. 7-10 or more ads, probably not okay but don't panic, just report it - 30+ ads clicked by one person...start panicing and remove your website from the allowed sites list, also report the IP addresses and times to adsense)
• many visits coming from a single IP address. This can cause problems with Adsense if those visitors are also clicking ads.
• many visits coming from the same referrer and you don't know why. Check out the referrer and find out why the visitors are originating from that site. Someone posted your link to a blog or group, that's probably okay depending on the purpose of the group. Someone posting your link to a link farm or link exchange - not okay. Contact the site and get them to remove your link.
• visitors coming from your own IP address and clicking ads. Definitely not okay. Even if it isn't YOU, it is someone in your household. Or,  if you use a wi-fi connection and don't lock it down, it could be anyone close enough to logon to the internet using your IP. Make sure you password-protect your wi-fi logon, and don't share it with anyone. You may also want to check your connections even if you are using cable or dial-up. We ran into a situation where a neighbour had cut another neighbour's cable near the pole and inserted a splitter box. The neighbour was then able to use the cable connection belonging to someone else without paying for the services...and causing the other neighbour to have enormous internet bills.

If you discover anything you find suspicious or unreasonable on your stats, then you will want consider reporting this instance to AdSense. Please, please don't go reporting single unidentified click - that's not what we're talking about here. And you don't need to report every single click you aren't certain about. If you pay attention to your site activity, you'll soon be able to recognize things that are unusual or out of the normal ranges of your site activity.

You can report these using the Invalid or suspicious activity form, found on this page in the Adsense help center.

On the "AdSense policies: a beginner's guide" page you'll also note a small paragraph about traffic: "Be aware of how your site is promoted". Read it carefully, and follow the links in that paragraph because you may find that reading will save you a great deal of grief.

While AdSense doesn't tell you that you can't promote your site, there are certain types of promotional opportunities that AdSense frowns upon - things like traffic exchanges and link farms whose sole purpose is to send people to your site to register impressions or clicks. If you are planning to buy any sort of advertising to grow your site, you'll need to be very careful about what you buy, where you buy it, and what your purpose is for purchasing it.

If you are buying "traffic" ONLY to get your AdSense ads seen and perhaps clicked, then that's a very bad idea. For the most part, you will probably pay more for the advertising needed to do that than you would get in return by way of clicks. If you are purchasing advertising because your site has a product or service you want to promote (ie: that service or product should certainly not be AdSense, nor should it be any sort of illegal product) then purchasing advertising might be of some value to you outside of AdSense.

In any case, garnering traffic through purchases means the advertiser (in this case you if you are buying traffic/ads) who also uses AdSense must following the Google landing page quality guidelines given to AdWords advertisers, even though you may not be purchasing your advertising through AdWords. These guidelines include a quality component that says landing pages (ie: the page your advertisement leads to on your site) must contain:

• original and relevant content (so, don't advertise free websites if you aren't indeed giving away free websites on your site/page and don't have content copied from other sites or RSS feeds)
• AdSense lists things like making sure the purpose of your site is clear to visitors, and that your content is not copied from other sites.
• transparency - the user should be able to find out about your company or website easily (about us page) or be able to contact you easily (contact info), you should have a clear privacy policy, your site should not download anything automatically to any user or visitor, if you have a "download" button or link the user should know what they're downloading (clearly stated on the page) and the download link should begin a download, not route them to multiple other pages.
•  navigability - the navigation should be clearly displayed on your page and should be simple for visitors to find; all the links should work and go to the correct page.

The landing page guidelines are quite clear on the fact that originality is what they expect - "relevance and originality are two characteristics that define high-quality site content." I don't think they can be any clearer than that. Users should easily find what your advertisement states and they should be able to find that on your landing page, and you should not have content that is not original (created by you).

There are many other valuable hints on landing page quality for AdSense publishers who wish to use advertising to promote their websites: such things as browser behaviours, collection of personal information; using too many popups, popunders, floating box elements and the like; fast loading pages, portal or doorway pages, etc.

Here's where things may take a little twist. How does all of the above apply to publishers who are disabled for invalid activity? Almost any violation of policies, including those above, could widely be construed as invalid activity. If you are not in compliance with all policies that AdSense and Webmaster Guidelines list (and the Landing Page Quality Guidelines), then any earnings you accrue could be considered invalid. In otherwords, clicks on AdSense ads on pages that are not in compliance with policy could possibly be listed as invalid clicks.

Having an account disabled for invalid clicks doesn't necessarily mean AdSense thinks you've clicked your own ads - of course you may have, in which case you'd already know that you did. But for those publisher's who have no idea what these invalid clicks are (or where they came from), the email they receive is a rude awakening, and often comes much too late. Even if they are able to discover the cause, the chances of getting the AdSense account re-instated are almost nil.

Minor policy violations (like no privacy policy, or inadvertently placing an ad too close to content) may receive a warning notice, however, this warning should be taken very seriously.

Publishers should not only correct the issues listed by Adsense in the warning notice (throughout their entire site, not just on the page given as a reference), but should very carefully review their sites to ensure there are no other issues. Besides carefully studying the AdSense Program Policies and Webmaster Guidelines, if you have purchased traffic or signed up for free traffic, you'll want to consider the quality of that traffic as well. When it comes to traffic, all is not equal. Traffic from sources unacceptable to AdSense is worse than no traffic at all and can also lead to invalid clicks.

These are only a few of the possible causes for invalid clicks, but some that AdSense Publishers can exercise some control over.