Following yesterday’s post - I found it interesting that when I clicked on an image on Gawker.com - it led back to the Life.com / Getty Images site.   The words “For personal non-commercial use only” were clearly put on the bottom of the linked image.  Although I do not know if Gawker paid to use this image - I highly doubt it.  If they had I’m sure that the disclaimer would not be there. hmmm… 

As I mentiond - Life.com encourages the use of their images on blogs, e-mail, and social networking sites “for free.”  As you can see Gawker runs ads on their pages… so clearly they are a COMMERCIAL publication as they derive revenue from those ads.   They should be paying to use this image. 

While the usage rights are very clearly spelled out in their terms of service - I think this goes to show how dangerous printing those words “free” can be…   (more…)