The whole issue of copyright for pictures is so far behind technology at the moment its a bit of trying to apply laws written about how to ride horse drawn carts and trying to apply it to formula one cars.
The laws go against everything which is behind the internet (which is sharing information). Here is the interesting thing, If someone puts an image ujp on the web are they not putting it out there for public use and if you link to (not copy) that image in an iframe, image link, etc then really you re not copying it. You are only linking to it and its the browser which is infringing on it
. The law isn't clear about this still so it can still be copyright infringement. I would say if someone has gone to the trouble to not allow their images to be linked from elsewhere then yes it would be copyright infringing but if its out there and you can see it from anywhere on the web then it shouldn't be copyright infringing.
Its also more of a problem for people in the USA vs the rest of the world as generally if you have hosting outside of the US and/or not a citizen of the US and you don't intend to ever go there then its unlikely they will pursue you in your country. It will all depend on how much trouble the lawyers want to go to and whether or not there is co-operation between the countries. Also some other countries don't have the same payouts as the US so if they pursued it in these countries then they would get very small payouts as the owner needs to prove how much money they lost due to you having the image displayed and also how much you profited from it. It would likely be less then a few hundred at most and the hassle of getting a court order in these other countries is not worth the time or effort.
There is also the case of auto/software developed content that takes RSS feeds, etc. If you happen to get an image come through due to another site infringing who is at fault there ? The software developer, the website owner, etc. No one set out to take the copyright image and use it and it all happens in the background similar to googler images indexing the images. That would probably be the likely defence and would likely reduce any amount if any were awarded.
But if you want to sleep at night don't use images unless you created them. Its the only way you will not run the risk of copyright. Im not saying I agree with this but its the way it is until the laws catch up with technology.
