[Charlotte]

The important point to distinguish here is that fair use of copyrighted material is largely accepted for private use but not for commercial use, i.e. to make any money out of it. Displaying stuff on your personal website is a bit of a grey area + is more down to courtesy than law I think, since every single personal website cannot possibly be policed. A single use plus quoting/crediting the author may be often be accepted, depending on whether the author is a Mr Nice Guy or a git - and I think the author would have a hard time suing anyone for that - although this would relate more to text than to photo's. However, it is always safer + just plain courtesy to get permission first, and with photo's I think it's an 'honour among photographers' issue, except where a copyright notice is published alongside the photo specifically forbidding any use of it.

In any event - and back to the logo-in-the-background issue - if someone has displayed their copyrighted material in such a way that it is publicly accessible, i.e. published or on open display in a public place (as with signage), then they must expect fair use! The difficulty comes in assessing what "fair use" would include, which would in fact differ in various scenarios. Of course, in any case "fair use" specifically excludes reproducing it for profit, which is the main thing which copyright is there to protect.

Largely I think we have to use our noggin. I mean if you displayed someone else's photo on your personal website without permission, then yes the author would have something to complain about. But if you displayed a photo you took of your spouse which happened to have a Boots sign in the BG, then that would be ok. In the first instance, the other person's photo belongs to, duh, the other person. But your photo with the Boots logo in it belongs to you; yes, the Boots logo belongs to Boots, but as it is not the main subject, there should not be an issue. Now if it were a close-up photo of the Boots logo, then that would be a different story.