about the pictures, i think technically whoever shot the photos has some sort of copyright protection, and if the person is employed by a paparazzi agency ,then they own it, or they could be freelance people who sell the rights to a paparazzi agency for a set fee, and/or sell the whole rights to an agency and then the agency can be in charge of them.
now where the line gets blurry is, i’ve always thought you could use pics as long as you were using them as satire or making creative commentary about the said picture.
so maybe if you start writing critical commentary about the pictures, like comment about how the paparazzi got a bad shot and you would of done it this way or that way, comment on the lighting, the angle, anything. or you could start making little bubbles on the pics and write in some cheesy line that the person is supposedly saying.
get with your old jewish lawyer dude and ask him.
theres no way in hell the other 1000′s of sites that do what you do are paying those agencies 20-50 grand for pics.
you could also just start using a proxy server and upload the pics to any of the image sharing sites and embed the pics into your webpage that way, so then if the agencies try and subpoena the image sharing website to get the images taken down and find the ip address of who uploaded them, they can’t find you. just make sure you have a laptop that you payed cash for and didn’t give your name and address or anything to whoever or wherever you bought.buy it from. then just always use a proxy server and use free internet connections , they shouldn’t be able to trace you. the downside to this would be having to constantly look through your website and see if any images have been deleted by the file sharing site, then you would have to keep track of each post and what image was there and re-upload it to another image sharing site and repost it., but since i doubt many people dig through the archives, if an agency has it deleted, oh well, most of your readers will already of seen it the first time.

so professional…but then again, we ARE speaking of the idiotic paparazzi here.

and im confused, ok, i thought once pictures got put out into the public domain, they were free to use anywhere.

case in point dude….

That bitch that was fucking Eliot Spitzer…she got laughed at when her lawyer threatened to sue the NY Post for using the pictures on her myspace….

whats funny is, SHE was trying to sue, NOT the person who took the pictures, cause then technically isnt the person who TOOK the pictures the one who shouldve contacted the lawyers?

NOT Ashley Dupre?

so shouldnt say, oh, Lindsay Lohan be the one trying to sue like Ashley Dupre did with the NY Post?

if i was you dude, id ask someone you were friends with that might know something about the law, since, well, i think once non photoshoot pictures are posted in the public domain, they cant be demanding that you pay them…..

and this is the best they can do to try and keep you in check? pretty fucking sad and pathetic of them if you ask me….ESPECIALLY since you are basically doing the SAME THING as them, u know, except the fact you arent being intrusive to a celebrities like like those fucking scumbags are and shoving a camera in their face and stalking them while they are trying to do everyday things….

you are better than them and these, ahem, “Companies” cant deal with the fact that people care more about what you have to SAY than about the pictures of the actual celebrites they are TAKING….

Paparazzi are the lowest form of scum alive right now….worse than child molesters and Michael Vick’s.