It certainly is a minefield. Professionally I'm involved in web publishing and although the rules are fairly clear they're not widely recognised or followed. On a course a few years back about intellectual property the tutor stressed that virtually every image is owned by someone and, unless their IPRs have expired you have to abide by them by law. The owner may be absolutely fine with people copying, which is great, or they could be a pain (like me!). I had sight of one episode recently where a small firm was fined a 4-figure sum by Getty for using one of their images on its web site. They had to pay AND take the image down. Getty were into that for a while after they took over some other stock libraries like istockphoto, but they don't seem to be doing it now. Instead, you can legally use a lot of Getty images by code embedding them rather than just saving and posting them. That way they link back to Getty's site and the owner then benefits from more traffic as you say Joey.
Jokerdan said: "Just as a matter of interest and copyright law - and I am posing this as a serious question - but to who does the copyright belong? You as the 'collector' of such obscure and ancient photographs/images or the original photographer/publisher? If the latter, how can you claim 'ownership' or does this die with the originating source either in the literal sense or over time thereby entitling whoever to adopt the 'copyright'? As I said, I am not wishing to be controversial or anything just inquisitive as I like to know and understand these things."
Dan, that's a very valid question. In my own case, with the newspaper cuttings I published the copyright in the photos and text is most definitely still the property of the newspaper, but I reproduce them under a variation of copyright called fair use, which is where you're doing so for a specific constructive purpose, e.g. critiquing the item. Part of the purpose of the site is to show how games were reported, e.g. highlighting when the Express reported on us thrashing Man Utd 3:0 in 1978-79, gushing about how great we were, whereas in reality the performance was poor and I wonder whether the reporter was actually there. I make sure to acknowledge clearly that the papers hold the copyright to the original material but that the scans are my own.
You're both very very right that the photos on this board are brilliant and really important. I love this thread and am grateful to all those who take time to post them.
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