[android-developers] Re: Suspended my dev account without any explanation, Why?

Images found in Google Images are *not*, repeat, absolutely *not* freely available. Just because they are searchable does not make them available for you to use -- for any purpose.

They are copyrighted. Every. Single. One. Some of them may have expired copyrights. You can use those, but you have to be careful and make sure.

Others may be licensed under terms that allow you to use them. For example, some of the Creative Commons licenses allow commercial use.

You have to investigate each and every one, and I'd strongly recommend keeping very careful records. I'd also make sure that anyone claiming to offer them under such a license, actually is the copyright owner and has the right to do so!

You can obtain a license from the copyright owner. He'll probably want money. More likely, he'll just ignore you. It's probably not worth the effort in most cases. I'd get a lawyer before going that route.

I'm glad Google took you down -- but I'm very sorry you had to learn this lesson this way, this late, after this much investment of time and energy. I don't know what prospects you have for getting unbanned in the future, but if you've learned about intellectual property from this, I wish you well in future legal endeavors.

On Friday, May 6, 2011 9:32:18 PM UTC-7, Angry Developer wrote:

For my themes  I used materials that are freely available. Namely, I
used the images found in "Google images ".

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Android Developers" group.
To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
android-developers+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en