One of the biggest battles I fight, on the sites I manage, is educating those who contribute content on “image use rights”.
More than once, I have had to talk to someone who has used an image they found on Google Images.
The simple reminder is this:
Just because an image is on the Web, does not mean it is in the public domain.
Many of these sites are fairly high profile, so it is possible that we could get caught.
I must admit that I have done that on my personal blog, and that type of use is somewhat sketchy. I try to avoid it, but the Creative Commons license provides some great opportunities. Here is a blog post that goes into detail on using images on your blog:(excerpt)
Use Flickr’s Creative Commons search to find photos. You can then include these photos in your blog, and mention the Creative Commons license as well as the original photographer to give proper credit. (If you have a Creative Commons license for your blog as well, you can additionally use photos with a share-alike license, so it’s a good idea to add CC to your blog.) Wikipedia lists some other free-to-share images resources.
However, I have (way too often) seen this done for corporate promotion purposes.
Websites like istockphoto.com provide a fairly wide array of images for only $1 – $2 for web ready versions.
If an image isn’t worth shelling out a couple bucks for, it probably isn’t worth placing on your website.
Worse than that was when I have seen content on our sites that has done a direct image link to an image stored on someone else’s server. Not only does that “steal” bandwidth and images from someone else, but it also gives someone control over your content.
More than once I have seen someone place an image on their site with a direct link, only to be caught by the image owner and have it replaced by an anti-theft message, or something obscene.
All that said, if $2 is too much for you to shell out for your web site’s stock images, here is a collection of free stock image collections (all legal)