Facebook, social media in general, and search engines make it tempting to play fast and loose with copyright protections, but do not succumb to this temptation. As a business broadcasting messages over the internet, it is especially important that you mind copyright laws. Not only can the copyright holders discover the violation and sue for the cost of filing an injunction, criminal fines of up to $250,000 for each offense can be brought in federal court. Facebook may delete offending accounts. Search engines such as Google will block your website from search results if the copyright holder files a complaint. Stock photography companies are using photo recognition software to scan your social medial pages and website, identify likely theft, and turn offenders over to law firms. These are not theoretical or unlikely repercussions.  Multiple clients have told us about unwittingly using the wrong website designers and the wrong marketing strategies and subsequently having to pay legal fees when the lawyers start calling. We have personally had webpages of our own competitors banned from Google search results after we have caught them stealing our creative writing. Google is admirably efficient at responding to these complaints and serious about protecting intellectual rights on the internet.

Creative work does not need to display a copyright symbol to have copyright protection. Here's how to protect your company on Facebook. If you download someone else’s creative work and then upload it to Facebook, this obviously causes Facebook to label the work as yours. At this point you will have stolen work. If you want to push out an image or message that you really like, log in as your business and use the share feature on Facebook. This lets you have the marketing advantage of endorsing a message that will resonate with your audience. Only upload your original work or work to which you have clearly specified rights. Do not use photos for which your business has not purchased specific rights unless those photos are provided by a reputable designer who has purchased those rights. Note that those rights cannot be transferred. Just because a reputable designer put a photo in your website does not mean that you then have license to take that photo out of the webisite and put it on your Facebook page yourself. Your designer has purchased the right to do this, but that right does not transfer to the designer's clients.