I got busted. Bummer. Before we go any further, let me say that I screwed up, take full responsibility, and have paid my debt (a fine) to society (the image rights holder). It was never my intention to use a copyrighted image but, I got lazy, I did, and I’m sorry!
I am well aware of copyright issues but, I have always found negotiating those “Creative Commons” hurdles on Google Images to be challenging. Even then, just because they say that an image is licensed for reuse, what if it isn’t? All of them state that “images may be subject to copyright” meaning … what? Still, no excuse.
At one point I had signed up for a paid service that met my budget, Dollar Photo Club but, they folded. After that, and I do know that there are sites with totally royalty free images, I was always in too much of a rush to filter through those to find the right graphic.
Google was soooooo easy and, besides, who would even take the time to pursue someone who is as small potatoes as I am? Well, somebody found the time and they sent me a very nice, but firm, demand letter to remove the one specific image in question and to pay the fine.
It seemed to me that anybody could be sending me this letter and that they may not even have the rights to do so. What prevents anybody from asking me for money? However, after research, I came to the determination that they were a credible service and, not needing the headaches and being … guilty … I promptly folded.
Now, I do believe that this particular graphic may have been purchased from Dollar Photo Club but, I had no way to confirm or prove that. Moving on. The next thought that passes through my tiny brain is “How many of my other images on my two websites might also be being used illegally?”
Well, I sure as hell don’t want to go through this again so some immediate damage control was needed. Going through image by image and making sure that each was legal would not only be time consuming, it would also be all but impossible. Instead, I chose to sterilize all of the graphics on my sites in order to be 100% confident.
Since I was probably not the first person to be faced with this dilemma, there must be a WordPress plugin that can help. Fortunately, there was. It’s called “Quick Featured Images” and it is free. What a Godsend! The plugin is quite powerful and flexible and in a very short time I was able to figure out how to make it do what I wanted.
You may notice that all of the articles on this site now have different images (10-15 total). I know these graphics are safe since I either made them myself using PowerPoint or got them from a licensed site. However, my first step was to tell the plugin to replace the existing featured image on every post with one specific new image. Call it a placeholder. Immediate damage control. Push the button and … done. Thank you!
My other site, although much smaller, was actually more difficult. It does not use featured images so I was forced to manually remove the main graphic (my substitute for a featured image) in the body of each post but, I am now confident that both sites have been cleansed. I did have a lot of pictures on this site that I know were purchased legally and even some that I had created myself. All gone. Clean slate. Going forward, I will be extremely careful about what I use.
The plugin also has the ability to accept multiple images and then to disperse those randomly. I have chosen to create one or more specific graphics for each post category. This is in process at this time. Certainly, I will not be changing images one at a time. Lessons learned but, I have learned my lesson!
Craig M. Jamieson
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