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Topic : I am writing a book on web design. What elements should I remove to avoid copyright issues? I am writing a book on web design, titled Best website design. I will list photos of some good-looking - selfpublishingguru.com

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I am writing a book on web design, titled Best website design. I will list photos of some good-looking portfolio websites in the book. Do I need to take permission from the website owner? Will it be copyright infringement if I use it without permission?

I am quite confused.


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If you want to feature a gallery of websites that you think represent good Web design, just ask the designers of those sites. Most will be happy to say yes. Doesn’t matter whether it is fair use or not. You don’t want to publish and then see somebody complaining on social media that their site is in your book. It is also polite to ask.

You can also get the designer to provide a proper credit, for example “example.com — design by Milton B. Harmanfagle.”

Also, make sure to capture a really good rendering of each site so that you reward the designers permission to use their site by making that site look its best. There are many tools such as PageLayers (for Mac) that can render a high-resolution (i.e. 2x pixel ratio) full browser rendering of any website, including the part you would only see if you scroll, at multiple sizes to show responsive design.


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IANAL, but I think this would be borderline. It's arguably "fair use", and sounds like it meets the exception specifically provided in copyright law for "review and criticism". But copying an entire web page is pushing it. I'd ask for permission, and if someone says no, don't use their site.

What you CAN do is, if you see something on a web site that you think is a good idea, make your own sample web page that embodies that good idea, but that is not copied from the original. For example, if you think the collection of colors used on a particular site is particularly attractive, easy to read, eye-catching, whatever, you could mock up a web page using those same colors but your own text. Etc.


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