I am making shirts that contain images of artists that I have taken from the web. I manipulate the images with photoshop and use them in various tshirt designs. Do I need to be wary of copyright or trademark laws and how easy is this to enforce?

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Yes, you DO need to be aware that you are subject to copyright laws. As far as enforcement, this is strictly up to the copyright owner. SOME publishers are VERY proactive in protecting their intellectual property. Disney, for example, is notorious for agressive enforcement. They, along with many others, such as Warner Bros, King Features Syndicate, various record lables and many more, hire, virtual, ARMIES of investigators and attornies to scour discount outlets, flea markets, craft fairs and the web, to find unauthorized use of their client's images. When these products were found, the results were expensive lawsuits, criminal prosecution and the confiscation of ALL of offending inventory. I didn't just read about this. I used to do custom airbrushed tee shirts and art festivals and holiday boutiques. I used to ALWAYS refuse to do any copyrighted material such as Tasmanian Devil, Batman and the like. On more than one occasion, I saw investigators and attornies shut down neighboring booths and truck away cases of inventory because the artist used these images without the copyright owner's permission. At one flea market, I saw a "sweep" being done by what appeared to be hundreds of investigators. I saw as many as a dozen artisans get taken in simultaneously. The sweep went on for about four hours. They came to my booth, but, of course, didn't find anything to complain about. They actually had WARRANTS to search the entire flea market property! If you invest money in supplies and inventory, you could lose it all and STILL be subject to fines, jail time and legal judgements against you. For more information, here is the address of the offical US government copyright office website: http://copyright.gov