Copyright question - using photographs for commercial

King Cantona

Hi all,

Apologies that my first request in this subforum is a question, but I think you guys and girls are the right people to ask as I've read about a lot of people being p**sed off about people using their images.

Background:
I am setting up a website with the help of a friend who is a graphic designer to try and sell some nice illustration posters of famous sports celebrities.

We don't have images of our own of the sporting celebrities, so we have to find images to be used in the poster... such as newspaper/ media owned images from football match reports etc.

The images would have significance in the design of the poster, but the image will be heavily altered or transformed in the print we would sell. To give you an idea, it would be something like this: http://abduzeedo.com/files/originals/cover-soccer.jpg (disclaimer: that is not my website, nor am I affiliated to it).

So the questions I have are around the copyright of the original image to be used:

Do I

a) Need to find the owner, request permission and a licence to use it commercially,

b) Just attribute ownership of the original image to the original owner beside the print on my website, or

c) use the image without any permissions as it is being heavily transformed.

Please understand, I am trying to understand this from both an ethical and legal perspective.

i.e if it is case C as per above, maybe there is a gentleman's agreement in place to actually go with B or vice versa.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

KC

flyingsnail

The answer is A, you will need a licence from the photographer. Also if you are using the image of a celeb you may also need a release from the celeb. see here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11362700/Watch-Rihanna-wins-appeal-against-Topshop-T-shirt-image-use.html

CabanSail

Unless the photo's have been released for free use (unlikely) you will need the permission of the copyright holder.

For commercial use there will also need to be a release.