On Wednesday, February 6, 2019 at 1:25:09 AM UTC+1, nospam wrote:
In article ,
sobriquet wrote:

If people can easily obtain pictures for free, why would they
pay a stock company for pictures?

because not doing so is theft.

Ok, so if you download an image like this for free:

if the entity who own the rights to an image says it's free, then
there's no issue. there are many such images.

not all images are free. if you download such an image without
appropriate payment, then there is an issue.

and even payment is not required, compensating the creator is the right
thing to do.

tl;dr don't be a mooch.

The entity who owns the rights to an image might sound reasonable,
except we're talking about images on the internet that might be in
a wide range of countries simultaneously, each with different laws
and regulations and for the most part these countries are fake
democracies as a storefront for shady corporate interests.