I have a wrestling news website, I am wanting to add a banner at the top of various different wrestlers.
would I be infringing on copyright laws by editing copyright images and placing them on my website.

I am kind of hoping it comes under fair use somehow...any thoughts?

This is some tricky business that you have your self in and stuff.

Option 1

You e-mail stating what you want to do, to the people that have the copyright against the image, give you feedback, either YES or a NO.

Option 2

You can google some images and stuff, and make your own banner, and leave a notice at the bottom of the page or a legal page and stuff, stating where you got the images and such.

Make sure you give credit, where credit is due. Otherwise, you will get your self in some serious legal crap...but I'm not sure, what to tell you really. You should use Option 1, and e-mail the owners and get the image holders permissions!

you answered your own question, bud....copyright means copyright and you CANNOT copy by any means....

but I said that I was hoping that it could possibly come under fair use which gives people the right to use copyright for certain purposes, that's my main focus.


I'll give it a shot, but the owner of the images are the WWE a multi-million dollar company, do you think they would give me the right or do you think that the people answering the emails would have the right to give me permission?


I'll try and research this one out.

An important point to make is that, in copyright law it states:

Even if you put a notice at the bottom you would still be infringing copyright. Fair use law generally covers research for students, teachers, scientists etc, and also for reviews and criticisms. I don't think creating a website banner counts as any of those. The safest option is to email them, although this is often fruitless.

Another important point I found in the copyright law is this:


As you say, WWE is a multi-million dollar company, and it is better to be safe and not use the images than have their legal department on your tail.

In this case, its just like all of us who have final fantasy sites and use their images in the banner. We use those images which squaresoft provides as backgrounds or that we capture from the game and make a banner. To be completely legal, all of us should state Final Fantasy is a trademark of Squaresoft etc and get their permission to use the images but none of us do for obvious reasons. My advice is just to make a banner with your images and if you get an email or something else stating that you are violating copywrites then just remove the banner and say sorry.

Like others have said, you should really contact the pics owners first. Although they probably wouldn't notice/care it is copyright infringement and you could end up with a felony conviction...

Play safe and contact the copyright owners first.

I have also got some copyright issues.

I want to ask a question that if the owner of the site has himself stated in his disclaimer that "this site contains materials that are allready available on the net for free".Then can I use those materials as the author himself has no copyright and also according to the disclaimer anyone can share those materials on the net.

You would need to contact the Copyright Holder and determine whether they are good with you using the information.
Regardless of whether the site which posts the information states the information is free to use, you must apply Due Diligence to confirm that information.

If the actual Copyright Holder finds the info being used on your site, things could get 'sticky' for you. Always best to determine the actual Copyright status for your self-interests. An angry Copyright Holder could make things uncomfortable for you, whether or not the 'middleman' gives you permission or not. And how does he mean 'freely available' on the web? did someone else violate a copyright? In that case, the actual Copyright Holder can take action against you if he feels that you are benefiting at his expense (or loss of income).

The results could be a shutdown of the Server you are operating from. That is why the Trap17 is quite determined that non-copyrighted information is to be avoided here. Too risky. Be forewarned that the Server Admins WILL shutdown your Hosting Account if you operate in the Grey areas...