How to avoid infringing copyright when you add an image to your blog and twitter

So it's really easy to find a sweet image on the Internet, take a copy of it and just post it to your blog or twitter but you should be aware that this really isn't such a good idea. You could very easily find yourself in a bunch of legal trouble with copyright issues if the owner of the image objects as these bloggers found out to their cost! To avoid this situation, you can of course post only images you own or contact the owner and ask to use or just pay to use images but none of these options are really too appealing. So how can you include any image you like in your blog posts and twitter without infringing on copyright??

When it comes to blog posts, the simple solution is simply to inline link to the image rather than posting a copy. This means that instead of adding a copy of the image to your blog post, all you need to do is just include the following HTML in the post specifying the location of the image: <img src="http://www.example.com/picture.jpg"/>. You can even easily resize the image without having to mess about with photo editing software. This avoids copyright issues entirely as your blog post doesn't actually include a copy of the image. Inline linking is actually what Google does and US courts have ruled that it does not violate US copyright law.

Next up, I'll show you how to include images in tweets too without infringing copyright.