What does labeled for reuse mean?

One of the most common problems that I see when people start their own website, or online business is that they end up becoming a thief.

The amazing thing about this is how widespread the issue is, and every single day I’m confident that there are thousands of people that steal without knowing that they are doing so.

In fact, I’ll admit that when I first started my own website, I ended up doing the same thing and only found out months later that it was inappropriate and, frankly, illegal.

So, what is it that people are stealing?

Images.

Images, just like music and film, have usage rights. Meaning you have to have the right to use the work in order to put it on your website.

Need Images For Your Website? Click Here to try Shutterstock

What does labeled for reuse mean?

The way I see it, there are two ways to explain what labeled for reuse means.

1) The official explanation that most websites use: Labeled for reuse means that individuals can take a photo and reuse it commercially, or non-commercially, as it is.

2) A simpler explanation: As an individual, you are able to use these photos in any way that you’d like, whether they be for commercial purposes, such as your own website, or noncommercial purposes, such as a school project. In other words, if an image is labeled for reuse it means that you can use it however you want, wherever you want, without modifying anything, and that’s okay.

As an example, if you found a photo that was labeled for reuse, you could take that image and put it on your website without having to worry about any possible legal repercussions.

For those that think it’s highly unlikely that there will be any legal action against them for using images that are not supposed to be shared, I recommend that you check out my other blog post, which outlines how Getty images have made a substantial profit off of small business owners who unknowingly steal website images.

Trust me when I say that you can be prosecuted for taking images directly off Google, Getty Images, in particular, has some very advanced technology that finds those images and will ask you to prove that you purchase them.

If you can’t prove that you own it, you’ll have to pay a pretty hefty fine of about $1,000 per image.  Just make sure that whatever images you use are labeled for reuse, and you’ll be in the clear.

One thing to mention, which is important is that you should always give attribution to the original author if you use an image for your website.

This isn’t required most of the time, but how would you feel if somebody took an image you photographed and put it on their website without giving you credit?

This is more of a moral dilemma, but I assure you that these photographers appreciate it when you do this.

Where can I get website images?

There are plenty of places to get images on the Internet. I remember when I first started out, I was stressing about how I could find website images because my content looked so bland without them.

Shutterstock: If you need really high-quality images, I highly recommend that you use Shutterstock.

The reality is that free images only go so far, and eventually, you may need a really nice picture for the homepage or other key pages on your website. This is the exact same company that I use for my really high-quality images, and I’ve joined their affiliate program because I know that this is a company that has great images at a very low cost compared to competitors.

Need Images For Your Website? Click Here to try Shutterstock

If you’ve found a database of images and you see that they are not filtered by license, make sure to understand your possible use cases prior to posting the images.