Pic Copywrite & Other Business Q's

A mixture of Q's for a business I've started with a friend and also a business I'm starting myself.

I've changed an iconic pic (see attached). How would I know if it was copywrited? And what's the least & worst they could do if they found it on a website?

Also, can you be sued for any privacy issues if you publish on a website public information. When I say it's public information - it's not openly displayed anywhere but is easily accessible if you know where to look for it.
e.g. Fred Bloggs won $40,000 on lotto last week. Could Fred Bloggs say he didn't want anyone to know about that and someone saw it mentioned on my website so he's going to sue me for making him upset/breach of privacy/whatever he can come up with.

For businesses that work from home where no clients will ever come to, do you have public liability insurance? What about professional indemnity insurance?
 

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  • Ollywood.jpg
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The owners of the picture could sue you for unauthorised use of their image. It doesn't help that you've modified it, either. It's unlikely to happen, but it could.

It's good manners to credit the original author if you pinch their work and post it on your site. For instance, I did a post about Depreciation Reports for my blog a little while ago and whilst doing research, came across depreciator's (yes, *that* depreciator) free ebook on his website.

So when I posted the blog post, I put a notice at the top of the page that most of the information was taken from the ebook and put a link to where people could download it themselves.

For businesses that work from home where no clients will ever come to, do you have public liability insurance? What about professional indemnity insurance?

I have both. Wouldn't consider trading without them. Why put yourself at risk?
 
It would be terribly hard to prove original ownership of that particular image.

How many of that particular image has been taken?

Millions.

Exif data can be erased so unless it's a image of something quite unique then you could possibly get away with using it.

However, as Mr Fab says copyright is with the owner of that image. And they dont have to declare it. It automatically rests with the person who clicked the shutter button.
 
My two cents worth: If you're unsure about the image, its less likely to be a problem if you don't make money from using it. That's hard to prove if this is for a business! Have you considered getting a sketch of it done which you can use without issues?

I've never been a fan of nabbing information from other websites unless it comes from a feed (e.g. RSS). Apart from what's already been stated by the other posters, a couple of things I can think of are:
1) Add a bot exclusion on your web host to exclude certain pages from being indexed by search engines. This is counter intuitive if you're hoping to drive traffic to your website using the questionable information.
2) Add a "Report" link so that it is easy for someone to report a link to you that holds questionable information.
 
So any recommendations for professional indemnity insurers who possibly do public liability as well please? Sydney are if that matters.
 
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