Copyrights and Copywrongs - Community Guidelines about Respect
It's like two sides of the same coin. 
On one side, you are the blogger, trying to finish your blog, when you find the perfect photo to to illustrate your point. And you know it would only take a second to copy and paste it right where you need it. Just one tiny problem - It's not in the public domain!
On the other side, you spent a half day of your vacation taking some great photos. Then you spent a couple more hours with photo editing software. It was really worth your investment, because you created some killer photos you used to illustrate your blog. Just one tiny problem - the killer photos showed up a week later in a competitor's blog!
A Quote from the ActiveRain Community Guidelines:
Respect copyrights. Only upload content and images that you have the right to use commercially.
Do not plagiarize content from another source and publish it as your own. You must obtain explicit permission from the original source to republish, and give reference to such within the body of your post. Permission to re-print is NOT the same as permission to re-publish. This also applies to publishing real estate listings that are not your own.
The point system is intended to encourage and reward genuine effort. Points for blogging will only be awarded for your own original content.
You have Alternatives:
Take some photos yourself. It is easy to do, and can lead to topics and interests that will fascinate your readers. Localism blogs are easy to illustrate and much more interesting with local photos. If you get in the habit of carrying the camera, you can build quite a collection of "stock" photos. This can be very useful when you want to blog about the beach in January. Photos can also be the reminder of something you intend to write about, and having the photo stored in your computer is an invitation to get the blog started.
Go to some free sites for photos. Search AR for free photos, and you'll fine at least a half dozen very good posts with good sources in each one. You can spend an entire evening just looking at the variety that's available. Almost all the free sites have a "paid" section, which is how they stay in business. When you are finished looking at the "free" images, move to the next alternative....
Buy some images. OK, sometimes it's just fun to shop. You see some interesting images that would be tough to create yourself. There are some really fine and fancy images available, and even the "cheap" ones look pretty impressive. If it fits in your budget, go for it!
Flout the copyright law - and deal with Lynn's lawyer! If stealing and reposting someone elses' images still seems like a good idea at this point, then I have one very convincing counter point left. Search for Lenn Harley and "copyright". Lenn has been defending copyrights for a long time. She has created some very detailed maps of her area, and has had to go to court to fend off the lazy thieves who think they have a right to use them "because they're on the Internet". I strongly recommend that you follow a few of the links - the size of the awards from the courts will remove any remaining desire to shortcut someone else's copyrights.
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