Hello

Im wondering where some websites get their photos. For one, I know that it is not appropriate to just copy a photo from another website, edit it, and post it in yours.

However, some websites seem to be doing this anyway. Especially, if they are just displaying part of the photo as a thumbnail. For example, the home page of http://useloos.com/ and http://attuworld.com/

Ive also spotted a few other websites doing the same thing.
So are they just googling for the photos and then doing a simple copy-edit-paste? Or are they actually spending a buck for every photo?

Or, for each photo, are they emailing the owner asking them if they can use their photo. This can be a bit tedious, since they would have to wait for the owner to get back everytime before they can post.

What are your thoughts?

Regards

A few that Ive come across so far are flickr, which has a search tool to browse CC-licensed images.

Morguefile.com also seems quite interesting for this purpose.

However, Im starting to suspect that most websites are generally taking photos from other websites, editing them (crop, resize), and then posting them on their website without the owners consent. Is this a normal habit?

Other websites may have a disclaimer, stating something like:

"Some of our pictures are owned and copyrighted by their original owners. None of the pictures on this website are claimed to be the copyright of the webmasters of this site. No copyright infringement is intended nor implied. Please contact us if you see anything of your that you wish to remove or give more specifi credit for."

What you are referring to is Stock Photography. Search Google.

iStock.com is an excellent resource for images. Anyone that is reputable is not stealing images from another site.