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Photos on the Web: A Consumer’s Guide

The billions of photographs and videos now available on the Web—some by professionals and an enormous number by amateurs—are increasingly difficult to interpret. Were the subjects staged? Was the image manipulated? Was the subject’s privacy respected? Who owns the rights? This guide is a brief summary of some of the key issues and terms to help consumers make sense of Web-based imagery. Sometimes, these terms are placed next to online images to help readers understand what they are looking at, but more often, they are not.