What's the legal position on using photographs of paintings on blogs?

[thequeenmary]

I'm in the process of setting up a blog, and will want to use quite a few images of historical portraits this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Darnley_stage_3.jpg

I'm wondering if I can just paste them into a blog post. Presumably I'm not infringing on copyright or anything but do I need any other kind of permission?

Probably a really stupid question, I'm assuming it's OK - but I'm paranoid about stuff like that and just want to check

Thanks!

[zanuda]

Did you make the photos yourself?

If not - you will brake the copyright and your OK means that nobody would bother to catch you.

And please, don't take it personally. Some of my photo ended up on different sites and they didn't even bother to leave a link, I don't even mention they didn't ask permission. I hate those guys. In this age of technology it's so easy to who took it. The worth part (didn't happen with me, but I know people who got into this situation) is when your content ends up on the site with much higher PR and search engines as a result penalize you and take your blog our of indexation entirely.

[peekyboo]

Go on stock photo sites (Google free stock photos) and see what's available on there. It's not worth infringing on someone's copyright. I use Dreamstime.com and often pay only a pound per photo but there are lots that are free. Paying a small fee, if necessary, is better than getting into trouble.

[MmeGuillotine]

I write quite a popular a history and art blog and obviously have to use historical portraits all the time for my posts - I always either use photographs of paintings that I have taken myself with permission or pictures that I have been given permission to use, along with the correct acknowledgments.

The painting you have linked to there is in the National Portrait Gallery and they currently have an arrangement where bloggers etc can download images for free from their site so long as you use proper acknowledgements when you post them.

[zanuda]

Just found the article about using spmebody else photos, legal aspects, it might be useful: socialmediatoday.com/rachel-boothroyd/1254836/using-photos-social-media-uk-legal-pitfalls