If the Images have not been copyrighted, or the creator of them has not taken steps to copyright them, then yes, the images in question can be used without incurring penalties irrespective of the fact that the rule of thumb is that whoever created the images essentially owns them owing to the principle of fair use, which is extremely complicated.There are some high profile precedents in which professional photographers have sued various organizations for having profited from their photographs, however that is not the kind of thing that would lend weight to an infringement claim because in the case of the image of the mango tree, the intellectual property is a modicum of enterprise, not the primary commodity of sale.
Unless it's nude pictures of you straddling a duck or whatever, in which case you're protected by DMCA privacy exceptions, there's not going to be a lot you can do about it without holding copyright.
I recommend reading the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The long and short of it is, if you want to be absolutely sure your images are protected, you need to have registered your image with some copyright Authority or other in order to claim copyright infringement and these need to bear that watermark. You should also timestamp them ( as the date of copyright). This because of, again, the mechanism of fair use, and additionally there are subversive ways of relegating images into the public domain; time is being of those ways.
Look at Oscar's Images of his fruit--that's how it should be done. If theoretically I used on of Oscar's images without permission, he would be within his right to sue me (after I failed to comply with a C&D). This would be expensive (suing people just is) but yes--if it went before a magistrate, it would go his way. Definitely; especially if I tried something greasy like removing the copyright symbol and timestamp, in which case he could slap me in the face with the spoliation bat to boot.
If you need to use a photograph of something and don't have one, try doing a Public Domain Search. By doing this you're covering yourself and aren't running the risk of pissing anybody off.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-free-websites-public-domain-images-free-stock-photos/
No. In the US, the photos are automatically copyrighted, no need to register them to be copyrighted.
I did write that the general rule of thumb is that whoever crates it owns in, and while the copyright does cover unpublished and published works both, this does not ensure that a claimant will succeed in suing a plagiarist were the issue to move to a hearing. Irregardless of anything else, the DMCA is subject to fair use. This important because it places limitations on the brevity of what is granted to copyright holders, which might sound like a cop out, but imagine if we lived in a world in which you could be litigated for humming a song as you walked down the street. Fair use clauses are designed to stop ownership rights expanding into sheer absurdity. There doesn't seem to be any uniformity when looking at fair use precedents. It can go either way. Not even Aristotle could make sense of it all. Fair use provisions allow copyright infringement cases to be
defended. So when push comes to shove, it's going to be an issue of who has slicker representation in the end. And if you're position can be reduced to the syllogism of 'I didn't care about anyone using it until they started indirectly profiting from it', well then you're probably going to be boned.
However, if you have formally copyrighted intellectual property of any description, you're in a much better standing to defend it had you not done this.
Here's one interesting case:
https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/lenz_v_universal/lenzorder082008.pdfDMCA takedown requests are really designed to stop media piracy (in this regard, the DMCA has failed spectacularly) and third party redistribution networks profiting in ways they shouldn't be without paying the piper. The act isn't really designed to cater for petty grievances between individuals (and silly things like people complaining about other people using pictures of mango trees which they were too slovenly to formally copyright). There are several other treaties and Acts which are better suited to ameliorating visual intellectual property disputes.
Fair use doesn't apply within the Australian Jurisdiction. But DMCA law does. Go figure.
I recommended sending a C&D. That's this guy's best recourse. You don't even need a Lawyer to draw one up, anyone can do it so long as they are more literate than the muffin I ate for breakfast. It's a gentleman's agreement and the best course of action 99.9% of the time.
