One issue that a lot of tour and activity operators bump into is the use of copyrighted photography. Often, somebody will see a nice picture of their destination, download it and place it on their website. Unfortunately, you can’t do this. If you do, you can expect a stern email from the photographer asking for payment. This fee will often be inflated because of a breach of copyright.
The issue arises because it has become common to download a picture or reuse a meme to use on social media. This is often without consequence because it is not worth the time of the photographer to chase payment. But they will go after a business using their work for commercial purposes.
Photographers will try and recoup money if you use their copyrighted pictures without permission
However, there are two famous examples of pictures becoming memes and the photographer trying to recoup some cash: the Distracted Boyfriend and the Monkey Selfie. Antonio Guillem, who created the Distracted Boyfriend as part of a series for Shutterstock said: “It’s not allowed to use any image without purchasing the proper licence in any possible way, so each one of the people that use the images without the licence are doing it illegally.”
The Monkey Selfie went all the way to court, with the photographer David Slater claiming he had lost at least £10,000 because of unlicensed use. This centred around an interesting part of copyright law. The person who presses the shutter on the camera immediately owns the copyright to that image, unless they have already signed a contract handing over the rights.
In the Monkey Selfie case, the monkey had pressed the shutter.
So who owned the copyright? In the end, the courts decided it had to be a human and Slater began to sue the companies that had used it without permission. This led to the animal rights charity PETA getting involved. Eventually, Slater agreed to donate 25% of any future revenue from the picture to animal welfare charities.
Many professional photographers use services that scan the internet periodically searching for their images. These are similar to Google’s Reverse Image Search and they work well. If your business uses a picture without a licence, there is a good chance you’re getting caught.
There are plenty of options for photos that you can use
How can tour operators avoid this? The first way is not to use pictures you’ve downloaded from the internet without permission. Don’t even think about it. Use pictures that you have taken yourself or by your staff, that you have hired a photographer to take, that are under a Creative Commons license, or that you have purchased from a stock imagery site.
When you have taken the pictures by yourself, you already own the copyright. There are no issues here. When it comes to your staff, you should include in their contracts that any pictures they take while working are owned by the company.
Your guides should always be snapping pictures of the tours they lead, even if these are on their phones. Some will have a talent for it, and some won’t. These are great things to share with your guests following the tour, especially the group photos. It means the travellers don’t always have to take a selfie and can get a lovely picture of themselves at a point of interest.
Photographs distributed under a Creative Commons license are very useful. They are used by generous artists who allow people to reuse their content with certain limits. Every picture you see on Wikipedia will use one. There are a few different licenses and the language can be a bit technical. You want to look for the one that allows use for commercial purposes.
There are a few ways to find pictures that use a Creative Commons license. One is to go to Flickr and check the box when you carry out a search for your location. However, Flickr has been on a downward spiral for a long time. The best way is to search online for: “Free stock pictures.” This will give you a number of results from Pexels, Unsplash, Pixabay, and a lot more. These companies are set up to give you photos that you can use for free anywhere. Just have a quick read of the terms and conditions first to see exactly what you can do.
Paid stock photography services provide the best quality
The problem with the free stock services is that they are very general and limited in the range of their offer. Good-quality pictures of smaller destinations can be hard to find. The paid stock photography companies generally have a much larger library and better quality control. These include Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Alamy.
Each of these services will offer you a subscription with a number of credits you can use each month. You can also purchase a single picture, but this is more expensive if you want to use a number of images. If you need 30 photos, look for one of the subscriptions that allows you to cancel whenever you want. You’ll still be able to use them after you cancel — you’ve bought the copyright.
Memes are also a breach of copyright — but it depends on the owner
When it comes to sharing memes on your company’s social media accounts you need to be careful. There is a reason that large businesses don’t share them. Doing so is a breach of copyright. Even though a Minions meme may be very popular, and they appear to be owned by us all, they are the property of Universal Studios. Universal seems happy to let things go, knowing that it is good advertising. However, if it was Disney you could expect the post to be taken down.
Smaller businesses are much more likely to be able to get away with sharing memes. The worst that is probably going to happen is that the social media platform will delete the post. Saying that, for a business, it is always a risk — especially if the content is owned by a company as litigious as Disney.
To reiterate — do not use pictures that you have downloaded from the internet without checking the licence. You will get yourself in trouble and have to pay more than you would want for using the image. There are plenty of other options tour operators can access without getting themselves in hot water, and potentially sued.