Nathan
The law changed on this at the beginning of this year.
You can take any picture from any site and do what you want with it. Obviously within reason.
No offense, but whoever told you this is talking rubbish. Use someone else's picture, especially one from the big agencies like Getty etc, and they will be all over you in a moment. I know several people who have done this, taken legal advice, and then paid getty the £1,500 they asked for. They have the law on their side, the images are their property.
I spoke to my website people and I asked about copyrighted stuff. They said we can remove a copyright in about two seconds.
Copyright cannot be 'removed' from an image. Copyright refers to who owns the image, and has the right to 'copy' it. It's not something within the image itself that can be removed. You might be able to remove a watermark, that's something different entirely.
I know you'll probably say I'm wrong etc etc, so I'd like to see you use one of Getty's images on your website without their permission. Post a link, and we'll see what happens.