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What is the official policy on questions and answers with embedded copyrighted photos? Does the fair use doctrine apply? Is there a difference between high-res "commercial" photos (like "action" photos from sports and war zones) and graphics presumably designed for social media?

What can users do when finding questions and answers with copyrighted images that are likely shared without the copyright holder's permission?

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    The only way for a specific use to be definitively determine to be "fair use" or not is for a court to make that judgement as part of a lawsuit. People can have opinions as to what might be "fair use". Those opinion might be reasonably consistent with what a court would likely decide, or could be wildly different, but they are really only someone's opinion (except in very limited situations where there's already clear precedent based on earlier court decisions).
    – Makyen
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 19:15
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    On Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow, it's far better to focus on if the posted content is following the referencing requirements and/or is violating the Code of Conduct's Inauthentic usage policy.
    – Makyen
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 19:18

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What can users do when finding questions and answers with copyrighted images that are likely shared without the copyright holder's permission?

If you're the copyright owner, file a DMCA takedown request and Stack Exchange Inc. will get to it in a reasonable amount of time.

If you're not, then there's no flag that exists to report "infringement", so there's no action for you to take.

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    there's no flag that exists to report "infringement" - Well there's the "other" and can explain, question is if it's really against the ToS.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 18:46
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    @ShadowWizardIsSadAndAngry: Yeah, but we're not really in a position to adjudicate copyright infringement. As in, we're literally not copyright lawyers and we're not copyright holders to say or state that this is definitively an issue. The main way to do it is through DMCA requests.
    – Makoto
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 18:53
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    @Makoto While moderators don't adjudicate copyright violations (in some more extreme cases we have escalated such issues to CMs), what mods do adjudicate is plagiarism/following the referencing requirements/Code of Conduct violations (e.g., violations of the Inauthentic usage policy). So, if the material, including images, is included in user-generated content on Stack Exchange and is not following the referencing requirements, then it's appropriate to raise an "in need of moderator intervention" flag or plagiarism flag (SO only, I believe).
    – Makyen
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 19:03
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    Complying with copyright and not plagiarizing/following the referencing requirements are related, but can be anywhere from congruent to orthogonal. The referencing requirements/inauthentic usage are things that are part of Stack Overflow's/Stack Exchange's requirements for posting on SO/SE, while copyright is a legal issue. As you've implied, it really isn't part of the moderators' job to judge legalities, particularly not something that's as murky and complex as copyright. However, it is part of the moderators' job to deal with users' or posts' violations of site policy.
    – Makyen
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 19:11
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    On many sites built around user-submitted content moderators routinely remove suspected (and often obviously) infringing content. So I don't think asking the question is beyond the pale. Regardless it seem this answer is correct and we don't have any policies other than DMCA for handling copyright infringement.
    – Gaslight Deceive Subvert
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 20:56

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