ALERT!!! Stop The Usage Of Non-copyright Free Images Within Our Community, And Throughout Steemit!

Esteem greetings members of our lovely community, we hope your time in the community and steemit as a whole has been quite lucrative. Following the grievances that have reached our notice, we deemed it right to address this issue and strictly follow the measures taken to help combat and eventually eradicate this persistent act.

Copyright free images refer to images that are made available to the entire public (everyone) by their owners/photographers, for either personalized or commercial uses. Most owners of these copyright free images still holds the rights to these images nonetheless, and as such it is only proper for the said user to insert the source link to these borrowed images.

Once an image is not copyright free, it is actively backed by criminal laws to combat all unpermitted uses. As such, the Steemit platform greatly frowns on Steemit authors who indulge in the continuous usage of copyright images which are greatly subjected to criminal persecution charges if used without permission.

After a series of observations carried out by the administrative body of the Steem Cameroon Community, the following reasons have been seen to contribute to this persistent dilemma.

• Incomplete work of mentors:
  We would like to start with this point because the mentors (those who introduce a new user) of all newbies (new user) are to be held accountable for not passing on the information properly, and assisting this newbies with the necessary steps to push on with these vital tasks. If every newbie can successfully achieve at least up till their achievement 4 task, then they can produce contest winning posts throughout the Steemit platform and attract juicy votes from the Steemit curation team.

• Incomplete achievement tasks:
  Most steemit authors do not proceed with the continuous process of completing their achievement tasks on the Newcomers' Community. These tasks have been assigned so as to perfect your skills and understanding quicker on the Steemit platform, hereby creating a conducive atmosphere throughout your stay. It is rather sad to see that newbies care less about the other tasks after creating their introductory post. Without these tasks completed, you will always lack vital knowledge, as such remain limited on this awesome platform.
  If you are yet to complete your achievement tasks, you can use this link to access the publication.

• Ignorance:
  We also realized that a small portion of authors are completely ignorant of the ban of copyright images within their publications. They believe that all images on the internet can be used at will. It is worth stating that the use of copyright images without due permission is a crime, and users could be held accountable if detected upon claims made by owner.

• Misinformation:
  A significant number of authors have been noted to use images from the internet at will, caring less whether it is copyright free or not.
  ^{Simply citing a copyright image borrowed from the internet doesn't automatically make it copyright free, this is a very misleading information carried about by some authors!}

• Partial understanding:
  A few authors have been seen using watermark images, these images are not accepted on the Steemit platform! Every image that has a watermark on it just like how steemians are suppose to place their usernames on images they own, is a copyright image. Most watermark images have the trademark name written in a faddish (almost transparent) manner, so that the beauty of the image is not depreciated. Please abstain from using such images.

  ^{It is worth noting that such images (watermark images) are also located on copyright free imaging sites too, so avoid using them when you see them. Some of them give out limited free rights too, however it is best you avoid them completely.}

• Lack of disciplinary measures:
  The final point we drew out was geared towards discipline. Since there is lack of strict and firm disciplinary measures to combat the continuous use of copyright images within our community and throughout the entire Steemit platform, perpetrators of this act have seen no reason to do the right thing.

Copyright free images can be gotten from google search through proper sorting. Simply citing the google link is usually not enough. We shall walk you through the process of obtaining copyright free images straight from sites that are linked to your google searches. Follow keenly as we proceed...

Explanations	Screenshots
First, go to the google search engine and click on the space to type out your search word.
Make sure to type out keywords like crypto, health, love, science, and so on. It depends on your search. We are using cryptocurrency for this exercise.
Once your search is complete, click on "Images" as illustrated.
Once the images have loaded, click on the filter icon as illustrated.
Now simply click on "Usage Rights" as illustrated.
Click on "Creative Commons Licenses" for copyright free images.
After the images load up, read the sentences beneath to find free imaging sites and not an entire article articles. As you can see, the early images seen here are undoubtedly articles judging from the statements written beneath.
Scrolling downwards, we see images with sentences that says they have a whole collection of copyright free images (green and blue arrows)
Clicking with the blue arrow illustration takes us directly to the copyright free imaging site, and you can see that the authour has given permission for use of image.	Pexels.com
Unlike the previous click, clicking with the green arrow illustration would first take you to that specific image, however there is a "Visit" area which would take you straight to the main site of that copyright free image if you click on. As you can see, the site offers copyright free images too.	Vectorportal.com
Always make sure to copy the link to these images by simply going to the URL box and extracting the link to be used as citation.

Of course if you do not see a suitable image for your publication, or need a steady site from which you can get copyright free images, we shall be listing out a couple of sites you can readily visit for this purpose. Always remember that all copyright free images are borrowed, and as such, an outright claim should not be ignorantly made by the borrowing user, rather he/she must cite all copyright free (borrowed) images as means of acknowledgement.

• burst.shopify.com/photos

• pikwizard.com

• unsplash.com

• freerangestock.com

• pixabay.com

• flickr.com

• pexels.com

• freeimages.com

• As the administrative team goes about its duty, all images that have citations shall be verified.

• All images that are not cited shall be examined with the use of google lens.

Due to the tedious work this processes entails, strict sanctions have been debated on by the administrative body. They are as follows...

• Upon realization that an author uses copyright images, the author will be cautioned and shall have his/her post muted.

• In the event that the publication is a contest entry which warrants a rating, the entry automatically looses value/quality, thus warrants no reward.

• If an author is caution multiple times, yet he/she is adamant to restrain from using copyright images, the author automatically loses his/her credibility after durable examination.

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The announcement was done for @steem-cameroon by @b-naj and @wase1234