Is it legal to watermark an image and host it?

[JohnnyBBB]

I have two questions....

Let's say that someone posts a picture of a tree on the forum. They took the picture with their camera. They just posted the picture, no message along with it. A few people look at it, a few people save the image. The image gets passed around.
One day Google finds the image, uses software to write the google URL on the image, and then hosts the image for the entire Internet to see. They make no claims of ownership, they just host the image

Would watermarking an image be illegal?
Would hosting it be illegal?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Google doesn't do what you describe. If someone took your image and put their logo on it and hosted it on their web site, it would appear to be an easy case of copyright infringement.

 

[patenmet]

if its your image, and your the one watermarking,that's fine, the details are vague