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you can't use em for anything unless you have a release
Ditto on that - some royal doodoo if you use the images without the people having signed a release. You can take photos of a CROWD of people usually without any trouble to use, but not individuals. The stock site someone listed for you above is but one of the micro-stock sites you can use to get pics (for a small fee per photo), and they will be approved because they require the photographers to have model releases for people photos they upload.
1. "Trolling through google and downloading" the pics is also stealing someone's work without their permission. All the pictures you find are copyrighted and you can't use them without the photographer's permission.
2. Not sure why you need thousands of pictures of random people, but not only are you stealing someone's work, you'll also get in trouble if you don't have a model release if you plan on using their images for commercial reasons (as others have already noted).
So unless you want the photographer and the model to come after you, I'd suggest you purchase the images or take the pictures yourself. Just make sure you get a model release from each person if you do take them yourself.
Haven't I seen that picture before? I'm not sure if it was at the Bosley Hair restoration site or the Hair Club for Men commercial, but I know that I've seen that guy before...
Location: Splitting time between Dayton, NJ and Needmore, PA
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To the OP,
This sounds as if you are trying to cut corners at best and downright illegal at worst. The other comments in the thread regarding model releases and the legality of using photos without permission are spot on.
If you are looking for "thousands" of photos, you should be looking at the stock photo sites that have already been mentioned. BUT you need to make absolutely certain that the photos you buy can be used in the public domain. If you are freelancing graphics work for a client, whatever you pay for the photos should be billed to the client as a pass through as it is an expense incurred while completing the job.
Unfortunately, my content budget for my project is zero, so that eliminates buying stock photos. I was assuming that if some picture is available on the internet (with no warnings or watermark, which I skip), then I can use it. In theory it's for commercial gain, although at this point in my project, it's solely for my own entertainment and running a profit of negative $10.00/month (the tech costs).
I wouldn't be selling the photos; they're for fake company profiles in my fake company which claims to make lots of stuff but in fact hasn't done a dadgum thing yet
I was assuming that if some picture is available on the internet (with no warnings or watermark, which I skip), then I can use it.
This is frighteningly far from the truth. A photograph (or ANY original work for that matter) is copyrighted to the creator at the time of creation and until the owner relinquishes that ownership of that copyright (or it expires), it belongs to them. A copyright notice such as in the form of a watermark is merely a precautionary deterrent for thieves who carelessly disregard the law (or in this case people ignorant of copyright laws) and has no legal bearing on whether something is actually copyrighted or not. Unless a work is specifically stated to be in the public domain, it is best to assume it is copyrighted.
Quote:
I wouldn't be selling the photos; they're for fake company profiles in my fake company which claims to make lots of stuff but in fact hasn't done a dadgum thing yet
It doesn't matter. A copyright is just that. It's the right to COPY a work - any type of republication of a copyrighted work in any way without permission is a violation of that copyright.
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Haven't I seen that picture before? I'm not sure if it was at the Bosley Hair restoration site or the Hair Club for Men commercial, but I know that I've seen that guy before...
