There are free stock image sites, such as stock exchange (sxc.hu). Many images on that site have liberal usage licenses.

That being said, do not use stock images for evil. Evil things include:

1. "Corporate" skins that feature suited people staring at you with arms crossed

2. "Personal" Skins that feature stock images of little children laughing

3. "Hosting" skins that include gratuitous images of gigantic servers

Be responsible. Stay away from the clichés.

Stocx.Xchng images are useless for commercial skins.  Their license expressly states:

"Your license is non-transferable, which means that You are not allowed to sell, rent, give, sublicense, or otherwise transfer the Image or the right to use the Image to anyone else."

That means everyone has to go to them and download the image before they use it in the commercial skin.  They also don't require model releases, so images of people are pretty much useless as well.

But I'm very familiar with stock images, image licensing and commercial uses.  I've been dealing with them for a quarter century.  My question is whether commercial skin producers know enough to have secured th rights for use in a skin, usually licensed as use in a "web template".  In the case of the specific client I've been dealing with, if it's not a licensed image or the license can't be verified, it's not usable.  They don't have any problems with paying for the rights, they pass that on as an expense anyway, but the usage rights have to be in order.

Thanks,

Jeff