Are free adult wp templates legal?

[whitey]

Originally Posted by ozzyt

I was going through some content providers looking for some content for a project I am working on. While reading the license agreements, I noticed that they all have one thing in common. That is what brought this question to mind.

Webmasters and designers offering free adult templates for wordpress, do they obtain an exclusive license for the images they use? If you read the license agreements, they all state that if used for web design the image(s) must reside on one of you registered domains and any banners must be linked and clearly marked with said same registered website(s).

It got me thinking. Do they pay the higher licensing fees for exclusive licensing so they can do what they want with them, or are they using the content for the designs while this very important issue slips their minds and violating their license agreement unknowingly? We all know that there is no such thing as public domain when it comes to adult content. What are your thoughts on this issue? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Any good theme developer will put any sort of image liscensing agreement in the theme folder. If it is not there, assume that there may be questions.

Images for the purposes of distributed themes can be obtained through several means:

1. Licensed for that specific purpose, meaning someon bought that lic.

2. It is now a public domain image, more than 28 years having elapsed since the initial publication and the copyright has not been specifically renewed (a copyright is automatically acquired by having published something, but it needs to be registerd to extend the time frame of protection). There is a theme or two out there that I know of using older images generically, and they are likely public domain. But, should you not know for certain or it is not documented in the theme, there is a risk.

3. It has been released under any number of public licenses: GPU 1.0, GPU 2.0, Apache, etc. People do this to promote their work. If this is the case, the lic. should be included in your theme folder.

4. It is the work of the author - again, my preference is to have the lic. in the theme distro folder.

Personally, I try to use text headers and get the surfer to the content and sales pitch as quickly as possible. If I do use a banner, I do it myself to avoid looking like another site. You then avoid the whole issue altogether.