Using others' pictures on my site

[emPtYKnOw]

Hey guys, whats up. I am making a webiste right now for a new business venture and i have a question. To make some of the images I used MS publisher and within publisher they have clipart pictures. Is it legal to use those clipart pictures on my site. Now i didnt just copy and paste it. I did some adjusting, changed the color scheme removed parts of the picture and so on. Also, what I did was take some pictures from another site and modified it. Is that legal? All it was was a small picture of a computer and I used photoshop to put our company logo on the screen.
Thanks for your input

[11001001]

In most cases, no, that's not legal.
Most websites have disclaimers regarding the use of their images which are most often copywritten.
There are seldom loopholes that would allow you to use another person's image, regardless of whether or not you changed it. The fact is, they created the original, which is the basis of your design.

With regard to the publisher clipart, they outline specifically that the images are not to be used in electronic publications, etc.

[englishgirl1]

If you are using Microsoft clip-art go here: http://www.microsoft.com/permission/copyrgt/cop-img.htm to get further info. However, the short answer is "if you are going to make money from using it, you'll probably have to pay".

Sorry!

Rachel

[cross]

there's 1001 places on the i-net to get 'free' clip art. I suggest finding a site that does not care about publishing their work. Do a google search.

[tHeHeTeRiC]

ya i'd search google fer free pics it would be better than getting sued

[Noia]

u want pictures? go look at www.deviantart.com they post all kinds of pictures that u can use....

- Noia

[Valor]

deviantart.com is awesome.

How many websites do you guys think are using 'illegal' images as their own?

[rcgreen]

Not a problem. Even great artists copy and modify other people's work.

http://www.studiolo.org/Mona/MONA14.htm

[The Old Man]

There is a considerable amount of change in what we (USA) have in the past considered protected (or not protected) under general or copyright law. Even international treaties are effecting the change. A fair discussion of the changing world of intellectual properties may be viewed at http://www.studiolo.org/index.htm where RCGreen referenced the Dali-ized version of the Mona Lisa. As i see the Dali version, he was (referencing? copying? who knows, at least the moustache was not on fire...) a painting from some time ago, certainly longer than the artist's life plus 70-years... setting aside any question of some museum owning it... Some buildings of special interest and architecture around the world are "copyrighted", and you can't even legally take a photo of them, because the owners do that and sell them.
At one time you could safely "paint" the representation of another artist's or photographer's "painting" or "photo"... however that seems to now be in question.
The safest path is to produce your own images, take your own photos, or get written permission from whoever you want to display the works of.
Much better than getting a bill from someone you never heard about before, who claims some intellectual ownership of something you are displaying.
But, like englishgirl1 mentioned; if you are not using it for commercial purposes, or twisting the images in some way that shames the intellectual property owner, you are probably ok.
Some years ago, MS bought up a *slew* of photographer's and artist's "portfolios", lock, stock, and barrel. So if MS has it in their offerings, and you don't particularly commercialize the image, you are probably OK. As long as you at least try to follow their (MS) guidelines. One time i bought a disk of images, and found the small print warned against *any* public display of the images. Obviously the publisher had just gone around collecting images and sold them to whoever had fifteen-bucks and couldn't read the small print until they played the CDRom. At that point (reading the fine print) i boxed it back up and took it back to the store and told them they were peddling a fraudulently advertised product, since the box indicated you could use it to make websites, cards, or whatever. Got my dough back and the manager took the rest of the packages off the shelf.
There are a lot of places with "free" images, however they all either say they are absolutely royalty-free, or they say you have to abide by certain stated guidelines. Just read the small print, print it out if you want to, and enjoy designing your website.
Copyright, artists, photographers, authors intellectual rights are a touchy subject.

[Palemoon]

I'm with Old Man on this one well put BTW, even here in Seattle there is a sculpture under a bridge in a fun part of town called The Troll, thing is copyrighted not even a paper cannot run a photo of it without paying a fee. Often Clip Art is public domain (Mickey Mouse was set as a slew of other old images to become public domain but thanks to a few lobby people and big bucks it was extended) unless it's packaged into something else and then have to read the rules. Dali was a painter as was the Mona Lisa a painting, did he copy it in a sense but it is only one element in the entire painting you'd have to see them real life to understand an Artist viewpoint
Peace