Each of our contributors understands that they are only to post images they have personally created on this website.
Posting photos taken by friends and/or family is discouraged but acceptable if the original photographer agrees to the release of their work, and it is otherwise suitable for the public domain.
We do not take photos from other web sites and post them here. Nor do we allow our contributors to do so. Legitimate people donate their work to the public domain for a variety of reasons and we prefer to link you to their work rather than just uploading their images to our site at this time. If a site becomes unavailable and we are able to support their collection here we may offer to host it.
While there is nothing illegal about this practice we feel that there is more than one reason not to do this and any contributor caught posting "found" images will be banned from the site, and all images that they posted will be removed.
However since our images have been donated to the public domain you may find them mirrored at other sites. This not uncommon and although we moght prefer to be linked this is part of expanding the public domain. If more than source has a particular image it is much more likely to survive and continue being used.
Since these photos have been released to the public domain there will occasionally be people who take them and in one way or another attempt to claim the work as their own. If we are contacted by a party who alleges copyright infringement we will immediately remove the image in question and conduct our own investigation of the alleged infringement.
All of these circumstances together provide a powerful incentive for our contributors to post only their own, self-created photographs or images to this site.
