No, this is actually true. A basic disclaimer and option would practically protect you. It's just not legal. Most places aren't going to waste the money to sue you for a minor infringement. They would normally just send a C&D letter anyway, so you be practically safe, just not legally safe. There was that one site that ripped off a bunch of pictures from a modeling site, and they got sue for a lot of money. This is the basic truth behind owning a proxy. You can theoretically be charged for anything that a proxy user does on your proxy, but as long as the owner makes a basic attempt to stop abuse and ban abusers, then you are practically safe.
If you take images that directly belong to a site that sells celebrity pictures for profit, such as Getty or Photorazzi, then expect to get a warning, at the very least. That's because these websites are in that business. There are two main ways that can find their images: 1. They can find you because their images can contain a type of watermark that can be picked up by certain search engine spiders, so even if you change the name of the picture, certain search appliances can still find the image. 2. These sites have people who enforce usage law, they are paid to browse the web (no, they aren't hiring) and check out popular sites for certain celebrities to see if anyone is stealing their images. Look, if you've got a small website that gets little traffic and is under the radar, most you'll likely get is a strongly worded email warning coming directly from getty.com or whatever domain owns them. After that. it all depends upon if you piss off the company or not. If you email them back some wiseass remark, or, if you do something blatantly stupid like try to pass yourself off as more knowledgeable about usage law than the guy who's job it is to enforce usage law (ever get out of a traffic ticket by claiming to know more about the law than the officer? Neither have I), then expect to get screwed for using their images. You can, of course, take images and post them under the United States Fair Use Law. Get yourself a cup of coffee and start reading: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html The perezhilton.com website probalbly got in trouble because that website is actually a good one... and I'd guess it makes a profit .