A ways back we had a discussion going about images being lifted from the net and used without the photographer's permission. Here's the most recent case of a photographer's re-tweeted images being lifted from Twitter and used by a major outlet and new agency... he sued and won $1.2 million dollars. Apparently they didn't even take the images from his account directly, they nabbed them from someone else's repost...
http://www.slrlounge...se-getty-images
The worlds of social media and image copyright collided Friday when a judge ordered two media companies to pay $1.2 million to photographer Daniel Morel. The images of the 2010 devastating earthquakes in Haiti were taken from the photojournalist’s Twitter account and used without his authorization by both the Agence France-Presse and Getty Images.
Furthermore, if you are worried about your online image's copywrites:
Why is This Relevant?
This ruling provides insight into the highly debated question of who owns images posted publicly to social media services like Twitter; and moreover, whether they can be used for commercial purposes by third parties.
The short answer is “no.”
While users can embed tweets with photos and retweet photos, these images cannot be downloaded and used commercially, even if they are taken from a “retweet” and not directly from the original user’s account.