Picture Copyrights

At one extreme is a presentation that is bereft of any visual content, and at the other extreme is a set of slides that have all visuals with little or no text. Yes, we do live in a world of extremes! We are not advocating which is a better approach, but contemporary presenters make sure that they include visuals on their slides. The adage, a picture is worth a thousand words is popular, and yet the truth of that statement may not hold good in at least one scenario:

Where did the visuals or pictures used in a presentation originate from?

Many people use image search options on Google or Bing. When they see the results, they right-click the thumbnail they like and copy the image using a relevant option, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Don't copy images without permission from image searches

And then, they paste the image right into their PowerPoint slides!

Before you follow this exact process, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• Do you know that Google and Bing do not own these pictures, and they are merely indexing something from other people's or organization's sites?
• Do you know that these pictures are all copyrighted, and are owned by either the site owners or have been licensed by them for use on their sites?
• Do you know that you are breaking the law by using these visual assets in your PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, or Google Slides presentations, or elsewhere?
• Do you know that there are horror stories of people losing their jobs or life savings just because they used a copyrighted picture, and then had to face legal proceedings? The law does not differentiate even if someone violated the copyrights without being aware.
• Do you know that just because the chance of being caught and penalized seems low, you still cannot afford the risk? The peace of mind that you attain from knowing that you haven't broken the law is immense.

Now, what if someone unintentionally copied a picture and used it? This approach may work for an 8-year old doing a school classroom project, and even in that scenario, it is debatable if using this option is ethical or not. After all, teachers and parents can guide the child and make him or her aware of what's right or not. These valuable foundations should be taught at a young age.

The worst offenders are presentation creators from the corporate world, who follow the same procedure: copying from Google's and Bing's image search results and pasting within a slide in PowerPoint or another program. The worst part is that many offenders don't believe they are breaking any copyright laws. They mistakenly believe that almost anything on the web is free! Well, this is not true.

Figure 2: Using images from search engine results is not ethical

There's no excuse for not worrying about copyrights, especially with the amount of free and low priced visual content that is available. Even if the content was not free or low priced, the loss of reputation and face resulting from such copyright violation is not something any company or professional can disregard.

To know more, do read about Public Domain and Creative Commons articles on this site. You may also want to learn about using photos in presentations.