Could someone please clarify whether or not i will get banned for having images on my micro niche site without the owners consent?

If the images have no water marks and i use them, will the big G know if i have the owners permission to use them or not?

yeah. they can put you in jail for this kind of things.

Originally Posted by deserte

yeah. they can put you in jail for this kind of things.

Thanks for the informative reply. I am asking because I imagine they may ban you for this.

Any website infringing image rights of others will be banned.

What kind of images ?

I

Originally Posted by ilanru

What kind of images ?

Anything related to my niche. Let's say 'bananas'. I go and get a picture of a banana of google, copy and paste on my site.....

It's definitely hit and miss, i've done it forever and never had a problem but then you hear the horror stories.

Originally Posted by Dumper

It's definitely hit and miss, i've done it forever and never had a problem but then you hear the horror stories.

same here! the possibilities are quite low except the original photo uploader finds out u have his pic used on your page and if he doesn't want that he will email you so don't be anxious, go 4 it

Thanks for advice guys

Photoshop the image mate, copy it and use portion of the image and put ur site addy

IMO it's just a technicality, I mean someone would have to complain for you to be banned for that, and even then they most likely threaten to/sue you instead of complaining to google or something

I wouldn't do it. Copyright holder would send a takedown notice to Google, which would alert G to the fact you are using images without consent with Adsense. Google has an individual [DMCA Agent] who has to manually look at the site to see if the infringement claim has any merit. Imagine they wouldn't be to happy to see adsense ads on it.

If you're running a site where users are responsible for much of the content, I wouldn't encourage infringement but on the other hand I don't think you will be held responsible if you show some effort has been made to follow the rules.

Now if you're ripping images from elsewhere and presenting them as your own, your odds of getting in trouble are probably pretty low but that's still just lazy. It's not difficult to credit the source, get your own images, or modify them significantly so that copyright wouldn't apply anyways (fair use).