The Tel-Aviv District Court rejected the appeal of Isha'ayahu Rotter, the owner and operator of the forums website "Rotter", on the Magistrate's Court judgment ordering him to pay the photographer Shlomi Buchacho NIS 50,000 damages, for copyright infringement in 5 of his photographs that were published in the website "Rotter". Those photographs were taken from the website "walla!" without Buchacho's permission and without payment.
Rotter tried to rely on section 8 of the Copyright Act and contended that the photos were published in the website "walla!" without the name of the photographer or any warning next to them which limits the use in them. According to Rotter, an innocent surfer could not have known whether the photos were protected by copyright.
The court ruled that in this case Rotter in not an "innocent surfer", but a surfer who is the owner of a website who makes his living from the stories and photos from other websites. The court also ruled that even had Rotter been an "innocent surfer", the fact that he didn't know about the copyright in the photos does not entitle him to use the photos without permission.
As to the amount of damages, the court held that the photographer was entitled to the minimum statutory damages available under the Copyright Ordinance, and was not required to prove actual damage after choosing the statutory damages route.

Following is a link to the case (in Hebrew).

http://info1.court.gov.il/Prod03/ManamHTML4.nsf/E10293ECBE296D31422573B00055DF00/$FILE/C19E26C4294C806C4225739B00240622.html?OpenElement