[Featured News] Are Custom Social Media Icons Legal or not?

[Featured News]

Are Custom Social Media Icons Legal Or Not?

A lot of people are becoming very confused and frustrated about a huge question:

“Are Custom Social Media Icons Legal or Not?”

No. No. That really doesn’t sound so good!

….CUSTOM SOCIAL MEDIA ICONS ARE ILLEGAL!

This week, many bloggers, online sellers, and designers have spread the words about the customized social media icons. They warned us not to change any sizes, shapes, and colors on any social media icons in order to avoid an violation of the copyrights and trademarks from other companies, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social medias. Online sellers are not supposed to sell the customized social media icons in their shops due to a risk of copyright infringement until they require to have the commercial use licenses from the companies.

To me, I am a personal blogger and professional web & blog designer in my web designing business. I learn my lesson and I plan redoing my all blogs and my web designing business. I feel that I should and can take my action and sort this thing out. I choose to honor the copyrights and laws because I do not want my blogs and web designing business to be shut down without my knowledge, who knows?

It’s very scary and frustrating. I, however, am not crazily panicked about losing my blogs and web designing business. That’s how I am very concerned about violating the copyright and trademark laws. The chance are I have to change and do the right thing.

As a web and graphic designer, I already wrote my post from my web designing business and announced that I must not customize any social media icons in any custom blog & web designs in my design services. I felt a lot of better when I wrote down my post up there.

What about my previous clients? Well, I did send them emails about the warning of any customized social media icons issue. Unluckily, I had not heard anything from them yet. I guess, they probably prefer to keep their customized social media icons, they made their choices. Not me…

If you are blogger, designer, online seller (Etsy, Ebay, or whatever you do) and want to customize your own social media icons in your websites, that’s your call..

If you want to do your research more about the custom social media that may help you understand, here the links:

1. Honoring copyright: Legal ways to use social media logos: http://www.hivestrategies.com/2011/05/honoring-copyright-part-2-legal-ways-to-use-common-social-media-platform-logos/

2. Angie Makes’ Losing Her Day Job: http://angiemakes.com/an-etsy-shop-terminated-how-we-lost-our-jobs-overnight/

3. Improper Use of Social Media Icons Can Cost You Big Time: http://morefromyourblog.com/facebook-cracking-down-on-logo-usage/