Copyrights on images found on the internet?

It is NOT necessary for an image to have any copyright "verbiage" for it to be copyright.

You quite simply are breaking copyright law. End off.

Unless an image specifically says that it is copyright free or under a creative commons license then you MUST assume that it is copyright protected.

Copyright is automatic as soon as an image is created.

You stand to cost yourself/your company a heck of a lot of money in law suits.

All images on the Internet are protected by copyright, unless otherwise indicated. This is true even if there is no copyright notice. In fact, the absence of a copyright notice generally means that the image is copyrighted. Only if the image is very explicitly marked public domain is it likely to be free of copyright, and even then, just because it is marked that way doesn't mean that it's public domain (you can't just put that on an image and make the copyright go away).

The law says that all images are protected by copyright as soon as they are created, even if the creator of the image puts no notice at all on it. In most countries these days, the image remains protected by copyright for the lifetime of the person who created it, plus 70 years or so (depending on the country).

Using a copyrighted image without permission from the person who created it is illegal. You can be sued or prosecuted for doing this. In addition, your company can also be sued if you are using the photos for company business (and most companies will fire you if this happens).

For company business, you should license photos from a stock photo agency. Many such agencies exist and can provide low-cost, high-quality photos for immediate download. These photos are completely legal to use because you pay for a license when you download them. I've done this many times, and it's way safer than pulling images off the Net and being slapped with a $500,000 lawsuit later on.

Even if they don't have verbiage, watermarks, etc. they may be copyrighted. That would be like taking a page out of the middle of a book, saying it's yours, and re-publishing it because it didn't have the copyright on that specific page. I've been a designer specializing in online training for over ten years. There's no need to steal images. If your company won't foot the bill for a photo collection or photo shoot, try free image sites. My favorite right now is http://www.sxc.hu/ They have lots of web-quality images for free, and some that you pay a bit for.

Legally, e-learning tends to be a gray area for copyrights because it's for educational purposes if you're not re-selling the training. But ethically, do the right thing! Ask the owner's permission before stealing their photos, or go find something that specifically states it is OK to use, or make your own.

Images found on the Internet generally 'belong' to someone (unless they are so-called 'orphan' works). Just because an image is on the Net, does NOT make it yours to steal. The absence of watermarks, or any copyright symbol does NOT mean that it's free for the taking.

The copyright rests with the photographer when the image is taken (except for exceptional circumstances where a photographer is employed to take images (ie for a newspaper). The photographer may choose to license the image for specific purposes, but you DO need to check.

You leave yourself open to legal action if you are using images without specific permission from the creator of the image.

It says what you are doing is completely illegal.

I found someone using one of my images on their facebook page, sued them, and won via summary judgement. The judge didn't think the case even warranted a trial.

You could be sued for $150,000 per image that you are using, and you will lose every time. You must have the image creators permission to use it.

Edit:

@AH: you are a little misinformed about the Fair Use for education portion of copyright law. This only applies to education regarding the copyrighted material and it is very limited. For instance if someone wanted to use my image of a horse to critique and discuss the image, that is fair use. However, if they use my image of a horse to teach about horses, that is not Fair Use and would be considered copyright infringement. It also only allows for one copy. So if a teacher showed an image in class for a slide show, it would be Fair Use, but if she made copies and passed it out to students it is infringement.

Companies and individuals hire other companies that search the internet looking for images such as your own. You can be fined "statutory damages of up to $30,000, or $150,000 if it can be demonstrated it was a willful act." This would be willful just on the fact that you are now informed about it.

Why not just shoot your own images? Or find someone that will barter with you? I found someone that needed images for a business website, getting small businesses to learn about marketing and such, I bartered wine for the images. Very nice deal for both of us. She got free use of the images, I got some pretty nice wines.

Read this article, it will help you out a little more.

Although images found on the internet are protected by copyright, there are many websites that offer free usage of the pictures with certain restrictions. Check the terms of usage in order to comply with these restrictions.

As an example, www.free-jpeg-images.com offers mainly travel pics with no restrictions for commercial or non commercial usage as long as the source is credited with a link to the site.