Using a stock photo without buying it?

Legally you cannot use a photo you find on the web with out the photographer's permission.

Stock photography websites contain thousands of existing photographs that can be licensed for specific uses. A customer who uses stock photography instead of hiring a photographer can save time, effort and money. Typically publishers can either purchase exclusive rights to a single image or they can purchase a subscription of sorts. The subscriptions allow publishers to download a limited number of photos over a specified period of time.

Stock photo websites allow webmasters, marketers and publishers to locate pictures for their marketing and promotional materials without the hassle of organizing a photo shoot. With copyright laws businesses must be very careful in using unlicensed photos.

There are also risks to using "free" photographs. Many of the free websites contain collaborative works from multiple photographers and artists. While the websites attempt to monitor the images in their collections in violation of copyright laws, there are no guarantees. If you opt to use photographs or images from a free portal, it is important to keep this in mind.

My favorite stock photo website is http://www.photo-wizard.net/

Here is where you can find some other inexpensive stock photo directories:

http://www.small-business-software.net/stock-photo...

Another site list can be found here:

http://www.webmaster-elements.com/webmaster-graphi...

Goodluck

No, you should withhold approval of the cover design until the images are properly purchased or otherwise licensed. You may also wish to consult with a copyright attorney to see if there are any issues regarding "derivative art" since the images are being used in a modified form (i.e. parts of images and removal of the watermarks). You may wish to consider finding a more honest graphic designer.

As a former professional photographer, I would encourage you to get rid of the designer that did that. A person that uses anothers art and removes the watermarks is a low caliber dishhonest person and not above cheating you when the time comes.

A persons work is their income and the designer just cheated some photographer out of money they had coming. Please rethink who you are using to design the book.

Digimarc has a watermark for professionals that track where your images are used on-line. It's pretty expensive ($499/yr), but worth it if you make a living selling commercial or stock photos.

Legally, it would be better just to buy the stock photos.

The above poster is also correct - your illustrator stole someone else's work and deliberately attempted to mask the fact that it was someone else's work.