How to avoid copyright infringement as a website owner

When running a small business or organization you have to be very careful when adding content to your website. You should know exactly, what you are allowed to publish and what not, to make sure you avoid plagiarism or copyright infringement.

All work published is copyrighted - this is true for most countries (certainely for the USA and Germany)! This means, you have to ask for permission to use it - whether there is a copyright notice or not. Never take credit for someone else's work and let viewers know, whose work it acutally is.

Also be careful with customer data. You should disclose in a privacy policy on your website how you gather, use, disclose and manage customer's data. In many countries, this is a legal requirement when running a website.

Budget-friendly photos for your advertising

Many small businesses and associations often have no budget for images for advertising, such as flyers or websites. But photos do not always have to be expensive.

When downloading photos from the Internet, Google Images seems like a great chance to get free material. However, you must be aware that these photos are copyrighted and therefore should not be used on promotional materials. Moreover, these photos were mostly optimized for the Internet and therefore the quality is not sufficient to have them professionally printed.

Therefore, you should draw back on photo pages, which let you have artwork with user licenses. On the following pages you can download pictures with an inexpensive license: www.pixelio.de, www.freedigitalphotos.net, www.morguefile.com, www.imageafter.com, commons.wikimedia.org, www.photocase.com.

When using images other than your own, you should always ensure that you purchase a license and may use the photos on printed material.