Hi,
 
We've been making a blog about vintage toys for some time now but we are stuck when it comes to banners and other similar stuff that requires images. At first I thought I could just browse google images and pick up stuff from there and make them into a banner but a friend pointed out that those might be copyrighted and we might get sued or whatever. I thought that this would be a bit of an overreaction but after looking it up I found out that there are many people with sticks up their butts that not only will ask you to remove the picture but they will also continue on and sue you even if you respond immediately. We've all seen lots of stupid sh!t copyright-wise (Barkley game comes to mind) that's why I'm asking you guys for some advice on this. Use google images for G.I.Joe, TNMT, power rangers and other toys or not?

Take your own or use http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page if you are terribly worried. I don't think using copyrighted images to make a banner for a zero-profit website matters too much, though. You could just cite all your image sources somewhere.

What about if the site uses google adsense? I guess that changes things