Quote Originally Posted by Don View Post
Using it on a website does not fall under fair use. The educational exception is much narrower than that. You can't just grab someone else's pictures and say you are using them for educational purposes. It is more for institutions and professional educators. You have even less legal ground to stand on if you just happen to also sell animals that are the same species as the photographs.

There has been a rash of people stealing pictures, sometimes stripping off watermarks and passing the photo off as their own. Whenever I see this, I let the owner know that their work has been stolen.

Those great photos take a lot of time effort and money. Is is unethical and unacceptable that someone else would post it on their website, even when credit is given.
how is it not fair use? fair use is not just for select group of people, nor is it narrow at all. I can very well educate people. It is of course for the courts to decide based on the 4 bullet points. But wheres your argument against it?

I don't see how taking the above picture and saying "this is a pinstripe, picture by Deborah" could be dismissed as education, since that is all it is doing, regardless of me selling other animals like it or not. Again it all about how the person uses it, but that's the scenario I thought the op was implying with the question and answer session. Do I think it's ethical? of course not but the law reads that way from everything I've seen.

striping watermarks out and/or claiming ownership is an entirely different scenario, with obviously entirely different intentions, possibly involving fraud.