Since joining here on Scorum about three weeks ago I have seen and read lots of wonderfully written and designed articles. There are quite some talented writers here on this platform who provide us a wide ranch of information and opinions about lots of different topics of the world of sport.
But after seeing all those different posts I'm more and more wondering how our community here on Scorum is thinking about the whole copyright discussion.
When I write my articles I'm often struggling to find the right photos to accompany my writing, to make it visually more appealing and attractive. But lots of the pictures I find on the Internet are copyright protected, therefor I refrain from using them in my work. I try to find „public domain“ pictures or something that is free to use for everyone.
Do we have the permit to use the images we want to add to our articles?
Most of the time I'm searching website like pixabay.com or pexels.com, but also on Wikipedia you can find a lot of images, which are marked as public domain or part of the creative common licensing. Of course that only leaves me with limited choices, but least I'm sure I'm not violating somebody else's rights on their own work. Especially photos of recent sport events don't seem to be copyright-free or public domain.
I'm not an legal expert, but what I learned at Steemit is, that using other people's work without permission is a No-Go, so I'm trying to stick to this rule for my Scorum articles too. But I'm also afraid that at some point I have found and used some images, which I shouldn't without having the permission to do so. It's clearly not easy to always to do it right.
But when I see many of those beautiful and inviting articles here on Scorum it seems pretty obvious that lots of the used images are not our own, and for me this is raising the question of copyright. Some users add some links, which clearly shows they have taken those pictures right out of the google picture search or from other news websites. But as much as I know, linking to the source will not get us around any possible copyright violation.
As I said, I'm not an legal expert, especially when it comes down to copyright. But it might help to just consider, how we would feel if somebody uses our work without our agreement. We do have a plagiarism checker here on Scorum, which I think is a really useful idea. It seems the majority of the Scorum users agrees, that we don't want to reward articles, where writers just copy other authors' work. But how about the photographers' work? Shouldn't we apply the same standard here?
Images seem to be a very important part of our articles, they can make our posts stand out and attract readers to stop by and check what we have to say.
And how about using the Scorum logo and design?
After checking the terms-of-use I'm not sure at all whether I can add some graphics from the Scorum website or the logo itself. Doesn't it clearly forbid to copy and use them?
"Scorum", the Scorum logo and any other product or service names, logos or slogans that may appear on Scorum are trademarks of the Company and may not be copied, imitated or used, in whole or in part, without our prior written permission.
Please correct me when I'm wrong. Maybe I'm completely mistaken here and there is some -for me unknown- way to use all those images in our articles. Don't forget that our posts are getting monetarized and as I reckon will always be on the blockchain. I'm worried that at some day some cease and desist-lawyers will get wind from and pursue any possible copyright violation. I tried to reach out and raise this topic in some discord channels, but didn't really get any response there.
That's why I'm looking forward to the planned Scorum photo library project.
Wouldn't it be great if we can easily purchase all those awesome photos smoothly through our platform here? No more hustle, just some easy and fast Scorum Coin transfer to get the legal right to use tons and tons of photography. Every writer interested in using those pictures can easily acquire them with just a few mouth clicks. I hope the incentive of monetarization will lure many talented photographers to Scorum and make them join our growing creative community.
But for now, let us think twice when we are choosing pictures to use in our articles here on Scorum. Do we have the permit to use the pictures we want to include?
There are many places where we can get copy-right free images, as I said I'm mostly using pixabay.com and wikipedia.
Please let me know how you handle this problem? Am I seeing it too strictly or am I just simply wrong? I don't want to be the party pooper but I just felt the need to address this issue today, also to figure out for myself to do it right.
Thank you for stopping by and I'm looking forward to your comments!
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