Layla Weber's Copyright Infringement Project

Question	Answer
What is the purpose of Copyright Law?	The primary purpose of copyright is to induce and reward authors, through the provision of property rights, to create new works and to make those works available to the public to enjoy.
What are the different copyright categories?	literary works, musical works (with words), dramatic works (with music), pantomimes/choreography, pictorial/graphic/sculptural works, motion pictures/audiovisual works, sound recordings, and architectural works.

Images fall under the pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works category in US copyright law.
You can copyright original creative content on your website, including text (blog posts, articles), images (photos, graphics), videos, audio (podcasts, music), and software code. These fall under literary, artistic, audiovisual, and sound recording categories, protected automatically upon creation.
You can check to see if an image is legal by looking for an image credit, contact details, or watermarks. You can also check the image's metadata, or do a Google reverse image search. If you're not fully sure, it's best not to try your luck. It could end badly.
If you are caught using a copyrighted image illegally you will be contacted by a law firm, a copyright enforcement company, or even the creator.
The penalties for illegally using a copyrighted image are legal fees, like civil damages ranging from $1,000 to $175,000 per work, not to mention the attorney's fees. If you're using the illegal photos for commercial gain, you could get up to 5 years in prison and about a $300,000 fine.
You can find out if someone is using one of your copyrighted images online by using Google Images. This would help a lot because you can see your direct image across the whole web. You could also search with keywords, or use automated monitoring services.

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