Many of you will have noticed the recent kerfuffle on the internet about use of images on blogs.  Many bloggers have used images that do not belong to them, and for which they do not have license or permission, and one author got in trouble for doing so.  It kicked off a long discussion and many expressed surprise that using such images would be wrong.

Since my husband is a professional photographer, this topic is near and dear to our hearts.  I asked him his opinion and he explained Creative Commons licensing to me.  For a longer discussion on the issues, I’d like to refer you to the blog by Vacuous Minx, in which she points the reader to an excellent article on Dear Author on the subject:  “How To Do a Google Image Search and Why You Might Want To“. I wanted to add a link to the Creative Commons license itself, here.  I suggest reading it, it is enlightening.

Also, for the record, the images on Lolcats and Loldogs are okay to use on our blogs, and are available under that license.  If you use other images, just check to make sure you are allowed to, first.  And, of course, use your own images as you wish.