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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Heliodromus, post: 7594321, member: 120820&quot;]For the most part that&#039;s not going to get you in trouble, but regardless US copyright law does cover photographs, and fair use doctrine limits when you may use photos for which you don&#039;t own the reproduction rights.</p><p><br /></p><p>As Victor has pointed out, fair use doctrine has four main components, with the main variables here being the nature of use, commercial or not, and whether the rights owner would suffer financially due to your usage.</p><p><br /></p><p>I assume (but I am not a lawyer) that posting photos to a public discussion forum like this, at least by a user, would be considered non-commercial, even though the web site itself is commercial - it carries advertising. If the owner of the web site posted the same pictures to spice up the website, that might be regarded differently.</p><p><br /></p><p>As examples of where the rights owner might suffer if you start copying their photos, consider cases where the photos were specifically taken in order to generate money, such as for a coin book, photographer&#039;s stock portfolio, or a coin web site generating revenue by advertising. Even dealer&#039;s photos used to sell the coin are increasingly being used to generate profit by being licensed to sites like Coin Archives, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course it&#039;d be bad business for a dealer to legally go after customers, or potential customers, over something like this, so in the US at least dealers&#039; photos used in moderation aren&#039;t likely to cause any complaints (and used in moderation, fair use probably has you covered anyway). On the other hand, if someone started copying dealers photos in bulk, for example to start their own Coin Archives competitor, then I&#039;d guess the response would be different.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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