Copyright Research

For the product, we have done a customisation kit. I have needed to research copyright laws because we are wanting to use pictures in the booklet that we are going to make for the how-to's. This is complicated because somebody has left it too late, so I have picked up the task, however they wanted to use pictures from the internet. I then asked if they had already got copyright permissions and this hadn't been done.
Therefore I have researched to make sure that there is no way for us to use the photographs and came across a blog, that had a problem of using someone else's photograph's and so went and saw a solicitor and put up the answers online.

Scenario 1: I copy someone else’s image onto your computer and upload it onto my FTP site but I include a copyright notice and link back to the photographer’s site (I do not notify them that I have done this).

From Burgess:

The first thing that needs to be understood is that every photograph is the intellectual property of the person who took the photograph.  Copyright protection attaches even where the person has not put a copyright notice and even if the copyright is not registered with the Copyright Office.  (You do, however, need to register with the Copyright Office in order to sue on your rights.)
Every copyright holder has certain exclusive rights that attach to their work.  These include the right to reproduce, distribute, display and create derivative works from the work (there are others that don’t apply to photography).  Without permission, even if you were to give credit to the copyright holder, you would still be infringing their work.
As far as my liability for you loading the copyrighted of the work onto my computer and uploading it from there, I could be subjected to vicarious liability for my part (or, more accurately, my computer’s part) in the copyright infringement.
If you were to contact the photographer and ask for permission to use the photo, you then would not be violating the rights of the photographer provided you abide by whatever terms the two of you agree to.

Scenario 2: I don’t copy their image at all but instead embed it onto my site using the URL of the image that resides on their site – so it appears on my site. I include a copyright notice and link back to the photographer’s site (I do not notify them that I have done this).

From Burgess:

Again, since the copyright holder has the exclusive right to distribute, display and create derivative works from their work, even embedding the photo on your site would violate the copyright on that work.
If you were just to include the link on your site where the image is not displayed, rather than the photo, you would not be violating the photographer’s copyright to the work.

Scenario 3: I don’t copy their image at all but instead embed it onto my site using the URL of the image that resides on their site – so it appears on my site. In this case, I DO NOT include any credit or link back (I do not notify them that I have done this). But if someone were really interested in the source, all they would have to do would be view the image to see where it came from.

From Burgess:

Similarly to the answer to question 2, the display of the image on your site without permission is a violation of the exclusive rights of the photographer.

You need to either ask permission to use the work (which is often freely given when you explain that you’re crediting the source in any way that they’d like) or you need to include the link rather than the picture itself.

http://gigaom.com/2008/09/22/understanding-online-photo-rights/
I have read these and realised there is no way for us to put the photographs in the booklet without breaking the copyright law and thus perhaps getting sued.
In order to solve this issue we have decided that Heather will do illustrations and I will write up the tutorials which need to go just smaller than A5 so that they will fit in the paper bags.