I hate those direct mailers that start off with in 2003 the {insert government name} passed a law banning {insert something easy for a company to do by accident} … Are you sure you are legal?  Just give us your credit card details…

So please note I am note selling anything as I start of on the legal scare tactic.

There are a couple of court cases going at present where businesses have had a website created using copyright protected images. Even though the company didn’t know their web designer had used them. It is worth checking you do not have any copyright issue on your site with your design.

Ideally the images should have come from a stock photo library like www.istockphoto.com and the correct licence fee has been paid. You also need to watch out that the licence is correct. For example if you add an image to a T-shirt and sell the T-shirt you might need a different licence.

To follow a discussion about one of the cases see…

Small Business Issues – Copyright on Images

There are also many cases where small business owners have bought websites in good faith with images included that are subsequently contested. Corbis’s legal representatives claim that … “Your lack of knowledge of the source of an image …