Hello, I have a legal question, someone said this area & forum would be best for my question and you would have the answer. Long story short, I would like to have a simple website that would have a gallery of images of different girls. They were not taken by a specific company or had water marks on them. They were simple home-take/made images. However, I was told I could be fined from other websites that have the same images & people. If I am not selling the images, and it is a free open gallery, is this illegal? Can I be fined? How does this work. Please help!
If you don't own the pictures or have express permission to use them, it's copyright infringement. The fact that they may or may not have watermarks makes no difference.
It's like people who rob banks, not everyone gets caught, but everyone takes the risk. Other sites may also have express permission with the copyright holder. Copyright infringement can actually be a criminal charge and there are people who have gone to prison for several years.
There are also minimum statutory damages for infringement, so a copyright owner can make you pay for your infringement even if you never make a penny off the images.