Ok im going to be a bit dim here.....but how do you know what you can and cant use...
For example if you go to google images and use a pic from there how do you know if you can or cant???
It's safest to assume that you
can't use a pic from a Google Image search. Google Images just crawls the Web for images on web sites, and will add any images that it finds to its database (provided that the website hasn't told Google
not to index any images on there, e.g. by means of the "robots.txt" file which is used to tell search engines what they should and shouldn't index on a particular web site).
Now the problem that people have been having is that their web designers have allegedly been using unlicensed images that are owned by a company called Corbis, which is an American stock photo company owned by Bill Gates. Corbis uses a company in Israel called PicScout to trawl the Web looking for images on web sites, and report unauthorised uses of their images. When PicScout finds such an image, Corbis then instruct their lawyers to write to the owner of the web site in question, demanding payment of a fee for retrospective use of the image on the web site (usually several times more than the image would have cost if they had purchased a proper license to use it in the first place). Getty Images (who own istockphoto.com amongst other stock photo web sites) also use PicScout, and have been known to demand similar sums for unlicensed use of their images.
The problem is that you don't always know the copyright status of an image if you find it on a Google Image search. If it's on somebody else's web site, then it might be one of their own images, but it might be one owned by a company like Corbis or Getty. Either way, using the images without permission would be a breach of copyright, and you'd be playing a game of Russian roulette as to whether it's a Corbis or Getty image, and subsequently found by PicScout.
The safest thing to do would be to legitimately purchase an image for use on your site, e.g. from istockphoto.com or whoever, making sure that you archive the receipt somewhere safe in case you get one of those extortion letters in the future (in which case just send them a photocopy of the receipt and tell them to stop harrassing you as you've legitimately purchased the image). Or use an image that is definitely in the "public domain", or issued under a suitable "Creative Commons" licence that allows you to use the image on your web site - visit
Creative Commons for more info on Creative Commons. Or just take an image yourself using your own camera, or, if it's for a logo or graphics for your website, design them yourself or get a reputable graphic designer to design them for you.
It's a shame that there's such a lot of "spammigation" (spam litigation) going on at the moment taking advantage of people's ignorance over copyright and demanding large sums of money - so my advice if you end up getting one of these letters is to contact a solicitor (e.g. Limeone is one that I have heard of geeks using in the past in a similar situation) as it could well be cheaper to pay for a solicitor to deal with the issue than for you to pay the fee demanded in the letter from Corbis or Getty.
