If you run a football blog, fan website, or even a small supporters page on social media, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read this.
What happened to me could happen to anyone.
I have been running The Villa Blogger website since 2013. It started as a hobby while I was unwell and spent a bit of time off work at home. It was never intended to become a business. It was simply a place where I could write about Aston Villa, share my thoughts, and interact with fellow supporters.
Over the years, I wrote hundreds of articles and, like many bloggers at the time (I presume), I used images that I found through Google Images. I never gave much thought to copyright. That was a big mistake.
Earlier this year, I received an email from PA Media Group.
They informed me that two photographs used on my website were copyrighted PA images and that they had no record of a licence being issued for my use of them.
The original settlement demand was £1,585. I nearly fell off my chair. My first reaction was disbelief.
The images had been on my website for years. They dated back to content published over a decade ago, in 2013 to be precise. The site itself generates a modest income and had never been a serious commercial venture.
None of that changed the fact that the images were copyrighted. This is the biggest lesson I learned. Google Images is simply a search engine. Finding an image through Google didn’t mean I had permission to use it.
It sounds obvious now, but I suspect there are plenty of bloggers, especially those who started many years ago, who still do not fully appreciate that.
If you do not own the image, have not purchased a licence, or have not received permission from the copyright holder, you may be taking a risk. I certainly did.
As soon as I received the claim, I removed the images. In fact, I went much further than that. I deleted years’ worth of old blog content because I was worried there could be other images lurking in old posts that I had forgotten about.
Whether that was an overreaction or not, I will leave others to decide. At the time, it felt like the safest thing to do.
PA did engage with me. I explained that the blog was a hobby project and not a profitable business. I provided evidence showing that the site had generated only modest income over its entire existence.
They requested evidence of financial hardship, and I supplied a redacted bank statement and my HMRC tax calculation.
Throughout the process, I remained polite and cooperative. Eventually, they reduced the settlement demand. Then they reduced it again. And finally, after one last request, they agreed to settle the matter for £240. That was still money I would rather not have spent, but it was better than the original figure.
To make matters worse, one of the images featured Gabriel Agbonlahor. After everything was finally settled, I could not help but laugh at the fact that the copyright bill ended up costing more than Gabby was worth as a player.
But seriously, if there is one thing I want other bloggers to take away from my experience, it is this, treat every image as copyrighted unless you know otherwise. Don’t assume. Don’y guess. It’s not worth it.
If you want to use an image, buy a licence or obtain permission from the owner.
The reality is that many bloggers, particularly those who started in the early days of blogging, learned by trial and error. Unfortunately for me, those errors led to me having to fork out.
I didn’t write this post to seek any sympathy. I wrote it because I suspect there are some football bloggers out there right now making the same mistake I made way back in 2013.
I hope this post will encourage bloggers to check their old content and any images they haven’t got a licensed for. Learn from my mistake. It was an expensive lesson. UTV
I am sorry to hear that. They shlukd have issued a warning.They could put warnings across social media. I don’t know your finances but you do a good job. Is it going to cause hardship? Utv.
It’s not going to cause me any hardship, mate. That was just one of the questions they asked when deciding whether to reduce the original figure. I had to show that I make a modest income, and as my full-time job is a private hire taxi driver, a modest income is exactly what I make. They wanted to understand my circumstances before considering a reduction, so I supplied the information they asked for, and thankfully they reduced it.
As a fellow blogger, I feel your pain.
I don’t earn a penny from my site and it only costs me.
I would rather go to prison than pay one of their fees.
If you don’t want them to be seen, don’t put them out there imo.
Agreed.
Well said
If you’re going to do a google image search you can add ‘creative commons’ or public licensing to the search. Check it out under Google Images search and Advanced Search.