Images/articles Copyright question

Ok,
This may be an obvious but thought i'd ask. I am going to design my first web site, well first one with some content.
Images, I need images but when does it constitute being illegal when you use an image you find. Like for example: I've seen images appear many times on different sites, they are not all "bought" are they? How about famous pictures like just for example: A sketch of The New Jersey Devil where the caption might say "This is an artists rendition found in the Jersey Newspaper which circulated in 1800. OK, that is just an example but how many people go out and search permission. How about a jpeg I might find of the painter Monet? How about somebody that puts Darth Vader on thier web site? It happens all the time, do the corps just not mind so much since a site may be not for profit. (Sorry if poor examples these just popped into my head :) )

Ok, now I suppose there may be a strict You must ask permission for anything you may want to use that you find on the net but there has to be things considered Public Domain right?

How about an article that you find interesting, can you post that and give proper credits?
I suppose the copyright law is in effect regardless of WWW or in hard physical copy. I am just looking for some guidelines. I am going to make a Not for profit site and want to include some cool things that I find while researching.

Does anyone know where I can get free graphics?

Thanks for any advice.

Have a great day.

Unless you have permision to use the graphics it is illegal. There are many websites how ever that offer free graphics. Try and search on google and you can find tons.

I personaly only use graphics made by someone else from certain websites. Even though the chance that if I copy a copyrighted graphic might be small, it is not a chance I want to take.

Over at a website I visit, about once or twice a month someone is point out a site that has copied another site. You would be suprised how many people copy graphics, or layouts. The offending sites are usually just taken down until the site is re-done. Disney has sued some people over using Disney graphics on personal websites. Disney seems to me to be sue happy over stuff like that.

On the other side of it, how would you feel if you spent many hours creating custom graphics for your website only to have them plastered all over the Internet? That is another reason why I do not copy graphics.

Articles are under copyright also. I would also contact the author of the article before publishing it, or else you can run into the same problem as with graphics. Many authors will let you post articles, providing you include some type of resource box at the end of it. There are many that also post articles to various resources for you to use. One of these resources is <a href="http://www.freewebarticles.com" target="_blank">http://www.freewebarticles.com</a> which is a website I used to run before selling it. At the time I sold it I had over 350 articles that were free to use as long as you included the authors resource box. You can also check out places like Yahoo Groups for mailing lists of free articles, or searching Google.

If you would like links to the graphics sites I use, or the article resources I use, feel free to e-mail me, PM me or post what type of stuff you are looking for here.

I personally would try to contact the owner of the website so that you may ask for permission to use the image, most will allow you to do so, and if you cannot get in contact with them just add a line to your website that you attempted to contact all image owners and that some were unreachable and let them know that if anyone owns these images and wants them removed to e-mail you and you will remove it immediately.