Image scraping & copyright

[micfire]

I was wondering is it legal to scrape website for image urls (with scrape permission of course) and use images on your own website if you clearly state the origin of the image and who owns copyrights. I was thinking about using phpThumb to burn copyright text in to image so every image that I use from the other site is surely marked correctly. I could ask permission from the site owner for scraping, but the problem is that all photos are user submitted so I can't email everyone about their photos.

These are very specific photos so I have only few sources where I can get them so any stock photo companies are no no.

 

[robertdotcom]

I was wondering is it legal to scrape website for image urls (with scrape permission of course) and use images on your own website if you clearly state the origin of the image and who owns copyrights. I was thinking about using phpThumb to burn copyright text in to image so every image that I use from the other site is surely marked correctly. I could ask permission from the site owner for scraping, but the problem is that all photos are user submitted so I can't email everyone about their photos.

These are very specific photos so I have only few sources where I can get them so any stock photo companies are no no.

Hey your banned so shut up
I dont know if it's legal but i had did it and didnt experienced any problems. Just once someone told me to take of their image and i did.

 

[meep_veradyusan]

I've been thinking of starting a scraping project, however, you could get bitch slapped if you grabbed the pic of someone litigious (and they noticed, knew the value of your violation, and were willing to pay for a copyright lawyer up front, and you have enough assets to make it worthwhile-so in other words being sued is probably a remote risk).

However, US copyright law provides statutory penalties no less than $750 per violation up to $30,000, at the judges discretion. If it's found that your violation(s) were done willfully, the max statutory penalty can be raised to $150k. Take a look at 17 U.S.C. section 504.

That being said, I am not your lawyer.

 

[StarkReality]

I was wondering is it legal to scrape website for image urls (with scrape permission of course) and use images on your own website if you clearly state the origin of the image and who owns copyrights. I was thinking about using phpThumb to burn copyright text in to image so every image that I use from the other site is surely marked correctly. I could ask permission from the site owner for scraping, but the problem is that all photos are user submitted so I can't email everyone about their photos.

These are very specific photos so I have only few sources where I can get them so any stock photo companies are no no.

Using them without license is definately illegal, putting copyright text on the image (so, changing/manipulating it) is illegal as well, even if it's their URL. User submitted content is an even bigger problem.

Let's face it: The big guys like google & co. get away with it, because they can afford LOADS of lawyers. Call it paranoid, I'm sure you'll get away with it 99% of the time, too...but in case the shit hit the fan and you mess with the wrong guys, you could easily end up with six digit penalties. Risk vs. reward isn't that good.