In Nederland we are explicitly forbidden by the copyright holder (Wandelnet) to use the wellknown images for long distance hiking routes (white-over-red and yellow over red). They themselves are obliged to act on violations of the copyright. That is why we don’t use or link to the images in OSM, but describe the symbols in text in the symbol=* and osmc:symbol=* tags. Wandelnet cannot fight us over that, and in fact they are happy they don’t have to.
Renderers read the descriptive text and render something that looks like the image of a logo, but in fact it isn’t the copyrighted logo. If Wandelnet should want to sue e.g. Waymarkedtrails over that, they would lose a lot of money and the case. However, should we start using images of the logo, even if we take the photos ourselves on the streets, we would be in trouble.
