First off Dave Owczarzak owns his own photo, but in fact the casino owns the rights to the design.

Dave always owns his own photo, even after he donates it to the Chip Guide. Any of us who donates a image of a chip, to TCG, still retain our original image rights that were instantly applied when we took the photo or scanned the chip.

If you use your own image and it is the same image you uploaded to the Chip Guide, you are fine. If you upload an image and then copy that image from the Chipguide, you can't use it on ebay.

True as the Chipguide image is now part of a web page, that is copy protected. I can't copy my own images from TCG and reuse them, because I took them from the website, it's not my own work.

The ChipGuide admins make changes to that file such as cropping it, cleaning it up, adjusting the brightness/contrast, etc. Now that they have made changes to it, the ChipGuide owns it.

Not True, just altering, editing or adjusting an image does not make it my property. But as an archive, TCG owns the content on their website.

Simple example, not a chip, Warhol used someone else's image to make one of his works of art (debate on that "art" part is a different subject) he didn't have permission to use the image of Prince when he did the photo copy and silk screen. That's some serious editing, cropping and altering. But the photographer still owns her original image. The Supreme court is deciding that one right now.

Easier and down to the basics: Shepard Fairey based his poster on an AP photo. He claimed fair use. AP and the photographer won.

So cropping and editing and doing adjustments, isn't enough to make the image, property of TCG. However, given permission from the original creator and then placing it on the TCG website, gives them rights and protection against anyone else copying from their site and using it for something else... eBay for example.

More basic and simple: the original creator retains all rights to their own image, and they granted TCG the right to use it, which then creates the TCG © protection and rights to their version and use.

Of course, we can all use our own images, as long as we don't copy them from The Chip Guide website.