Fan Mail Pictures

[Hartster]

As well, there has been two instances where a photo of mine was used on a site. Didn't matter whether or not I "suffered actual damages," didn't matter that one of them used it for a nonprofit organization and event, I sent them a cease and desist letter ordering them to take down the image or pay me. And they did take down the image. All I had to prove was that I was the originator of the image.

[spacedracula]

I didn't mean that you needed to suffer financial harm to send a cease and desist, that's absolutely within your rights as a copyright holder. Most websites will happily take down a single image rather then have their whole website shut down, and there are some webhosts that will do that.
I meant that for there to be any damages awarded in court, you're going to need to show that you have suffered financial hardship due to the unlicensed use of your work.
To prove something was printed out for Fair Use is a matter of intent, if you consider yourself to be a film/sports history buff then to say you're doing it for scholarly reasons is totally reasonable. If you maintain a blog or are part of any sort of Autograph community then its not unreasonable to say that you're doing it to comment about the picture and the signer.
On the other hand, you're removing watermarks from someones work or if you were routinely selling autographs on unlicensed photos on ebay or amazon, then it might be alot harder to prove your intentions were noble.

Poor Kim3303may, i fear we have hijacked her innocent thread