I have been searching all over the web, trying to find out if there is any legal way to go about running a photo website. How do people run photo websites without getting sued? Is there any way that a disclaimer saying that "none of the photos belongs to the site" would get me out of a law suit? Or is a DMCA takedown notice enough? Please help
Need to have registered agent, and sufficient information on your web site as to who to contact if copyright issues. See more http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101/
There are four legal ways to run a photo website: Use only photos that you have taken yourself Pay to license photos from a stock website Use photos which are made available under a creative commons or similar license (make you you comply with the specific license terms) Show photos which have been uploaded by users -- you must have a proper DMCA procedure in place and remove any photos that you get complaints about. If you are talking about finding a picture on the internet and uploading it to your website yourself, there's no amount of disclaimers that will make that legal. It's not a guarantee that you'll get sued but it is certainly a risk.
Register a copyright agent with the U.S. Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agent.pdf Keep in mind that this will only protect against third party infringement that occurs on your site; you're still responsible for what you and your employees, agents, contractors, etc. post. Also, this only protects you in the U.S. courts.