I have been online for many years now and I still remember building my first website through Yahoo! Geocities. Of course back then, it was not uncommon to go on a down-loading spree, right-clicking and saving graphics to decorate your website without a thought to copyrights, or the importance of giving credit. Believe it or not, the first copyright law to go into effect here in the United States was in May of 1790.

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In early 2002, I came across country style graphics and I was immediately taken with their charm and winsome appearance. I have been using them to decorate my websites ever since. If not for these wonderful and talented artists, my pages would be bland and uninteresting. I began to understand and educate myself on the importance of giving credit for the use of graphics, including pictures or text, while reading a Terms of Use page. These artists put their heart and soul into their creations, not to mention time and energy, and they deserve our respect. Cute, colorful graphics make a website more fun and exciting to visit, and most artists’ Terms Of Use (TOU) are quite simple to follow. Simple, actually.

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• You must have a family friendly website.

• Provide a link back to them for using their graphics on every page you use them on.

• Do not alter them in any way, unless specifically stated that you can do so (i.e. adding text).

• Do not direct-link to their graphics (this is considered bandwidth theft or hot-linking).

• Do not put their graphics into collections or claim as you own.

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​​The World Wide Web should always be a place for everyone enjoy. Unfortunately, that is not always the case, and over the years a great majority of graphic artists, especially those that made country graphics, closed their websites indefinitely due to graphic abuse and theft. It has been 20 years since I made my first website and I owe a debt of gratitude to these amazing artists for all the hard work and creativity that they have put into the beautiful graphics that I use to decorate my website.