Am I Allowed to Use Images from Another Site, Posted by the Site 'Guests'

[nissangtr]

Hi there,

I was curious as to whether it is illegal to use images posted by guests on another site on my site?

The site I would like to use images from is:
http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

The images on this site are posted by public viewers, simply by clicking 'submit an image'. Does this mean damnyouautocorrect.com owns these images and I would be breaking copyright laws using them on my own site? Or does this mean the guests own the images on damnyouautocorrect.com and not the site itself?

Here are the terms and conditions of the website:
http://damnyouautocorrect.com/submis...nd-conditions/

Any help would be much appreciated. Thankyou.

[flyingron]

Danny may own the images, or he may just have permission from their owners to use them.
What you do know for certain is YOU DO NOT OWN THEM. This means you can't just go stealing them without permission of the owner.
Nothing about the terms and conditions on Danny's site gives you any rights or permissions to take other people's intellectual property.

[jk]

unless you have permission from the owner of the copyrights, you cannot use those images.

That site does not claim copyrights simply due to a person posting the image on their site but does demand a license be granted. That would mean the person submitting the image would retain the copyrights.

There is no way to identify which images the site owns and which are owned by others immediately from that site so if you take any given image, you have no way if you are infringing on the rights of the site or some other party and yes, the individual submitters do have copyrights on the images they have submitted.

so, bottom line: unless you have permission from the holder of the copyrights, you cannot use any images on that site, or any other.

[nissangtr]

Thanks for the input. I wasn't going to go ahead with this, was just thinking about some possible situations.

So is a user posts an image on that site, would it not be the property of the user?

[jk]

So is a user posts an image on that site, would it not be the property of the user?

Unless the poster agreed to transfer their rights to the site, the poster would retain those rights. I saw no automatic requirement for a poster to relinquish their rights but that doesn't mean there is some agreement we are not aware of.