Inline Linking to other Web Sites
Copyright law is about ownership, whoever owns a piece of work should control the right to who can make copies.
Hyperlinking doe not break copyright
Leaving aside the rediculous position the
German Law courts have introduced into the situation the Web functions exactly as the
English inventor of the Web Sir Tim Berners Lee orginally intended, namely you do not need permission to link to another Web site.
With regard to pictures again, if your server does not hold the picture you are showing on your Web site, if the img src attribute is pointing at a publicly viewable copy of the picture that resides on another site then you are not breaking any copyright laws according to American Law.
German Courts and German Servers
If your servers are located in the USA then you are protected by American Law and there is nothing the German courts can do about it even if they tried. The Germans are in a bit of a mess with regard to their interpretation of framing and deep linking, obviously copyright protection is important
Clearly the USA is the most litigious society in the world and you'll likely find a lawyer who will take the case but it will always be overturned if a local regional court decides that it is a copyright infringement, as will be the case with the E.U. and any errant decisions made by member nations.
Do not host your Web servers in Germany
References
UK Copyright Law fact sheet from UK Copyright Service.
Wikipedia