Copying and Posting Copyrighted Pictures on a Station’s Social Media Platform Can Result in Litigation

Just a reminder that copying and posting pictures on your station’s social media platform can result in litigation for copyright infringement.  A reminder appeared in noted communications attorney David Oxenford’s Broadcast Blog.

“As we have written before ... just because someone posts a picture on the Internet, even on a social media or photo sharing site, does not give others the right to exploit that photo, especially on a digital site of a commercial business.  Posting on a social media site may give the social media site owner the right to exploit posted content consistent with their terms of use, but the person who created the content does not give up their underlying copyright in any creative work to third parties.  Just because you can easily right-click an image to make a copy of it does not always give you the right to use that image for your own commercial purposes.” 

The article is worth reading and passing on to the person responsible for posting on your social media platforms and websites.

You can see attorney Oxenford’s analysis here.