Legal Stock Sites - Photo resources

9 min read

Deviation Actions

StarsColdNight's avatar
Published:
3K Views

Supernatural-art All-Artists HighQualityArt Digital-Art-Club PsychoArtistUnited

Hello :wave:

Hope you are all having a great day.

It came to my attention some problems about what sites are legal stock providers and which are straight out thieves.


I have made a very extensive research to make sure I'm not making a mistake by declining images with not confirmed sources.


Please read very carefully, I will not battle about this later. All this applies to my groups.

Sketchy sites with no clear sources statements are not even considered.

First please read the basics of © Copyrights terms.

-Copyright laws are powerful tools that protect art and artists and can prevent the misuse of set artworks. More about Copyrights ©

-Fan art as love is different than fan art for sale. More about fan art ©



Google Is not a stock site, is a search engine that shows you images from all the websites online.

This means, You are taking other artists Photography to use as your own.

Which is a copyright infringement and illegal.


A direct copy of another artists work will be declined, even if it was in a different medium/style unless it was part of a challenge accepted by set artist.

You can be inspired by that art and create something different as your own style, but direct copy won't be accepted.


A direct copy infringements that artist's copyrights & ownership of their art.

The creator of the photograph, i.e. the photographer, usually holds the copyright to the photo and unless they've expressly given permission for its use, making a painting based on a photo would infringe the photographer's copyright.


You can find royalty free images on specific websites here Legal Stock Sites - Photo resources.

Unless an image is listed as royalty free you would be contravening international copyright law by using it to copy from.


Using other artists Artwork is infringements of that artist's copyrights & ownership of their art. You are basically stealing from them and Your post is illegal and direct ©copyright infringement.

READ THESE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION!




Using other peoples art is called art theft and is despicable when making money out of it too.

Your premium content is illegal, that post is illegal.


FAQS:

Click on the titles for full journals!


Permissions: We start with the idea that pretty much everything you use in a creative work that doesn’t come originally from you and that comes from someone else must be used with the permission of the original owner.

Stock, even free stock, comes with a license. The license is a real contract.


Stealing: Under the law, taking or using someone else’s creative expression is typically “Copyright Infringement,” which is, truthfully, a lot more complicated than just saying something was “stolen.” Copyright infringement is unlawful.


You must obtain written permission from the proper and legal owner of any work which you wish to use, credit alone does not replace this requirement. Failure to obtain proper permission for the use of works protected under copyright can leave your DeviantArt submission vulnerable to being removed if we receive a claim of infringement against it.


Explicit permission is not required when you choose to use valid stock resources. Please check your sources carefully to ensure that they are valid stock and please be certain to obey all rules, terms and conditions which may be attached to that resource. Please note that images found on search engines such as Google are likely not stock images unless explicitly stated otherwise.



This list is updated every month, a few sites we recommend that we know are legal sites and some that are clearly illegal.

If you know someone reposting things that dont belong to them, report them! Help us have a clear path for our imaginations to flow!


And if you have a legal site we haven´t listed, feel free to leave it in the comments for us to check!


SITES WE RECOMMEND:



STOCKS WE DO NOT ACCEPT:

Public domain doesn't always mean free to use and we don´t agree with any site who re-shares photos of other websites as Public domain just because they are on the internet. 

I understand what Public domain means, it doesn´t mean I approve it in My groups.

What the other groups policy is, I DON'T CARE nor will change anything here.

So if you don't like it, feel free to leave the groups listed above.


Celebrities photos

Are not stocks. I know they are public domain most of the time, but we will not accept them.


PNG sites

These sites are the biggest thieves among them. They compile and share everything without care, even artworks with copyrights protection. You risk a lawsuit.

They are all the same most likely managed by the same people (I found most are created in asia or india) I use the site whois.net to track owners and report them to their Hosting sites.


I find my own stocks there more often than not, we will not be accepting any of those sites, please take a look a our list gathered by several deviants around DA for guide if you are unsure.

Most sites offering stocks like this, are illegal sources, the better the stock looks, the more likely is its cropped from another art or stolen form other stockers like me.


Screenshots

of other peoples photos that are not stocks.

of games are not stocks.

They are not there to be used by us as we wish, its still someone else´s Artwork.


3D showrooms of products

VR or Virtual photos made with 3D showrooms (cars, phones, places) are not stocks.

They are literally a product museum.


3D Game programs

Unless they specify in the terms of use, these are not stocks and can not be taking out of the game or website as you wish.

Nor can they be used to make a 3D mash up or manipulation as your own, unless you have the license to do so (usually environments platforms/renders allow them to be used outside the site).

Game characters screenshoted from games are Not stocks.

Source film maker doesn't seem to be for art, just animations according to their terms https://www.sourcefilmmaker.com/faq/




AI IMAGE SOFTWARE GENERATORS

Beware of usage and copyrights. -Wombo: It has no real information on usage other than they own what you make there.

I believe the original sources of the final image are from around the webs too, from free domains most likely https://twitter.com/search?q=wombo%20art%20copyrights&src=typed_query&f=live & read a example of image outcome https://twitter.com/Behind_NFTs/status/1487456380982382594/photo/1 Also you are not allowed to sell it as NFT according to users agreement.


-Dall-E: You own the content as you see fit, but they also have the whole permission to abuse it too https://huggingface.co/terms-of-service. They do not warrant any type of insurance of where the images you create come from originally. Open source libraries can mean a lot of things but this needs to be noted before using. I'm not convinced those are created by the software without real photos from somewhere either. I've tried the simple word Fear and the results are basically crops and morphs from different photos. Some even resemble the Scream memes and movie cartels.

Examples: my result versus what reverse image search came up with, that is clearly the same photo just morphed and color changed.

Example: This result came up several times just morphed differently and the reverse image came up as this one.

Most results on the word Fear are very similar to each other like these.


-Midjourney: seems to be similar to Wombo, we will accept them as long as modifications where made to the final prompt. Unedited version are not your art, is more like the AI art of your words. If you didn't paint something on the final prompt, we wont accept it.

For example Sun Priestess -->https://www.instagram.com/p/CeBFk_SqE_Q/ generated images and combined later.

Or hand painted on top of the Ai image to add more details, items or definitions like Habitat

or Scars

-Stable Diffusion works the same as midjourney.



& read a example of image outcome https://twitter.com/Behind_NFTs/status/1487456380982382594/photo/1

© 2020 - 2024 StarsColdNight
Comments17
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
XResch's avatar

oh now that's a great list. :-)

https://brushez.com/ is also not trustworthy. Found my brushes on there and their contact address brushez@brushez.com is not reachable. I also contacted them through their domain provider, but did not get feedback yet.