Later edit: No, they did not follow the rules, see the Twitter replies.
Today I stumbled upon this article on one of our competitor’s blogs. Azimo tries to capture more Romanian market share with 6 images that capture the country’s beauty. Ok, that’s a great thing, I’m Romanian and I love it when someone talks highly of my homeland.
The problem is that I’m not sure if they actually asked permission to use those photos they embedded via Twitter. The rules of online copyright say that if you use images for commercial purposes (as they clearly do), you must purchase/transfer the rights in some form from the user before posting the images online.
If the images are marked as Creative Commons, then you must showcase the license and type of rights the image holder has granted.
If a company / consultant does neither and they use those images on a commercially beneficial property, like a company blog, they are in breach of copyright laws. It’s 2016 and these rules have been around for some time so you’d expect every company that’s out there to know before they click publish.
So @HistoryTime_, @cliveyquack, @Itasha75, @sysgenic, @swedeninromania (instagram), @ancientorigins, did you give Azimo the right to use your images on their blog?
I wouldn’t want to hear an answer that’s not Yes in this case. Here’s a 5 year old article to back up my claims.
p.s. see the featured image to find out how to search for commercially usable images online with Google Search