Ethical question regarding my job....

[Jumpem]

I'm doing some work for a friend of mine that owns a small car audio store. He's trying to get his website up and running and I've been entering product info and photos into some web/databse software he has. Anyway, my problem is that for some of the products I need photos of I can't find any on the manufacturers site or doing a Google search. I found a large online retailer that has pics of exactly what I've been looking for. The problem is that the photos have a copyright notice posted along with them. So there's the dilemma. Should I use the photos since they are of a manufacturer's product or just have no pics for some things? Thanks for any opinions!

 

[Linflas]

I would think that absent permission from whomever is mentioned in the copyright notice I would not use them.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: Jumpem
I'm doing some work for a friend of mine that owns a small car audio store. He's trying to get his website up and running and I've been entering product info and photos into some web/databse software he has. Anyway, my problem is that for some of the products I need photos of I can't find any on the manufacturers site or doing a Google search. I found a large online retailer that has pics of exactly what I've been looking for. The problem is that the photos have a copyright notice posted along with them. So there's the dilemma. Should I use the photos since they are of a manufacturer's product or just have no pics for some things? Thanks for any opinions!

why don't you take pictures of them? or is that not an option...


i mean take pictures of the products, not take pictures of the pictures

 

[Garet Jax]

You should not use the pictures. They are copy-righted.

You should take pictures of the items yourself.

 

[Jzero]

Don't take the other site's pics. Make your own or don't use any at all. It'll be a lot more headache if the place you got them from finds out and starts coming after you.

 

[Azraele]

I wouldn't violate copyright laws. Get permission to use them or just say that no pic is available.

 

[Jumpem]

I'm probably not going to use them. I might inadvertantly use a few as I'm not sure if all of the photos I already have are copyright free. I haven't seen notices at the other places I've looked. Taking pictures of the items firsthand is pretty much impossible. My friend's shop is rather small. It does a few thousand dollars at most in sales and installs each week. In order to take pictures would require him to order literally tens of thousands of dollars to have every item in stock. As it is he would order them from one of his suppliers when they are ordered online. Thanks again for all the remarks

<rant> Why can't manufacturers put decent(or any) pictures of their products on their sites?</rant>

 

[RaySun2Be]

See if the manufacturer of those products has a website, and try and get pics & permission from them. That's what we do with product pics. We are a reseller, and the vendors usually have marketing packets of approved pics, banners, logos, etc that we can place on our website.

If not, then the next best thing is to take pics of the products yourself.

 

[GrumpyMan]

I wouldn't use them, at one of our stores we are even prohibited to make color copies of copyrighted photos by law. $10,000.00 penalty.

 

[notfred]

Toyota has a website full of advertising material available to dealers. If you're an authorized Toyota dealer, you canm log in and download the photos they use in the brochures, along with oer photos, logo line art, etc. Maybe car audio manufcaturers have something similar? (I never did advertising for car audio...)

 

[mchammer187]

just give a link to the official website for pics or take some of the pics yourself

 

[scorp00]

Maybe you could email the company and explain the situation, and maybe they wouldn't mind?

Also, ebay is a great place to find pics.