Another Interesting Question

[curiousity]

If I right click and copy a picture (jpg or gif) of a famous movie actors/actresses that I find on a certain web page and later upload the picture to a free web host and my users can go to my webpage and click on the link to see the pictures.....is this legal? Or am I violating some kind of copyright law?

Thanks

[Technics]

ur allowed - But dont remove any copyright stuff they put on the pic .... and be kind and acknowledge were you got the pics from

[Chicken]

I don't know *why* this would be ok. I doubt it. Sounds like possible copyright infrigement of the image and/or of the site you got the image from.

I don't know why Eddie said that? You can't just got around taking things from various websites and putting them on your site (the general rule).

[Mrh0ax]

no, it is not ok, only if it is free graphics check out http://whatiscopyright.org/ for more info

[curiousity]

Thank you for the input. I was just thinking....have you noticed that there are a lot of Britney Spears websites and they have a whole bunch of pictures of the singer? Well, I doubt if the owner of that website actually took those pictures by himself/herself. So does that mean the creators of those websites are in violation of the copywrite law???? Any response to this? Thanks.

[Technics]

Ok this is sad but ..

When i first got online i was a britney spears fan *hangs head in shame* .... I emailed some big britney spears fan website that kinda kicked all other sites butts and there message board was always packed. 30 or 40 people always logged on.

I emailed the webmaster to ask if i could use images and they said - you dont need to ask as long as you give an acknowledgement of where you got the pictures from and dont claim there your own. I guess i never followed up the actual law but since they said it was ok i always thought it was.

[Mandrake]

My original site was a celebrity image gallery and the legality of it never crossed my mind, probably because there are thousands of them out there. Before I got into the 'net, I used to have a local BBS and had a large gallery on there as well (along with some adult images, which was easier to control access to on a BBS). That was really the main reason I started an image site, even though there are scads of them out there... I already had a large collection of images. :)

I never had any problems with hosting them, back when I used FWP's. I think it's one of those things that even though it's technically illegal, nobody really cares about them (unless you had nude images, perhaps). In fact I read a post on a FWP support forum once that commented that if they whacked every celebrity/fan site on their servers, they would lose about 95% of their members. :)

[Canuckkev]

Hmm...can't say I'm a "fan" of Britney Spears(the pictures I like, thats it). But I am considering making a "fan" page. I saw somewhere that "Britney Spears" is the most searched term on many of the major search engines. The only reason I am condiering it is because it has huge revenue potential. Think about it: Have a "Click here to enter" page that loads a pop up, then make the "Enter" link go to Clickheretofind.com . But if I was going to make a site with SOME actual content, I would just put up pictures and........links?(Don't wanna waste time with any bad stuff) I sort of wondered whether it would be legal too. Where do these people from other fan sites get the pictures? Well, other fan sites. My guess is unless the page you get the picture from specifically states that it is copyright, you can probably just copy it to your site. To be sure, a simple email to the webmaster would probably clear things up though.

[Nick]

Originally posted by Canuckkev
To be sure, a simple email to the webmaster would probably clear things up though.

You're nuts if you think that that webmaster emailed the guy he stole the pics from :p. One person scans a lot of them and uploads them to his/her site, everyone steals them and they start making a web of stolen pictures. Oh well, that's the way the net works :p.