It’s true, friends, we live in an era where small businesses are getting sued by super huge businesses for using a photo on their blog. And, it doesn’t matter if 10 or 10,000 people see it, you’ve just stolen a photo from the seemingly free interwebs and these big companies pay someone a salary you can only dream of to hunt you down and take your business, your car, and maybe your entire existence.
Scared yet? You ought to be. Look, you can be a badass in soooo many ways but, I’m telling you, this is not one of the ways where you want to look like you don’t give a shit. Give shits, lots of shits.
The great news is this: you have options when it comes to stock photos that are 1) legal (yay!) 2) free and 3) beautiful. And my favorite is right here for you: Death to the Stock Photo.
Why
Well, the above mentioned lawsuit, for one. Let me tell you a story about a suit filed against one small biz owner by one massive corp (originally shared by Laura Roeder — who is brilliant, btw.):
Not long ago, small business owner Anne received some surprising news in the form of a cease and desist letter. It came from a very large company that sells stock photography to businesses all over the world. I’m going to call this company Lots of Stock Photos, Inc. for the purpose of this post. The reason for the cease and desist letter? Anne had used several stock images without paying for their license.
She believed that the images she used fell under fair use – Anne’s blog is free to the public, not monetized with ads or anything, and the post in question was educational – she had even credited Lots of Stock Photos as the source! “I seriously doubt exposure on my humble blog would affect the value of 15 year-old previously published photos, not to mention that there are entire social media platforms like Pinterest and Tumblr devoted to sharing images – most of which are not owned by the people sharing them.”
Anne immediately took down the blog post that featured those images, and contacted Lots of Stock Photos to sincerely apologize for her mistake. Their legal department accepted that it was an accidental infringement, so they offered to reduce the fine from $2,340 ($780.00 for each of the 3 photo violations) to $1,650 ($550.00 per photo). Lots of Stock Photos gave her a little less than a month to pay the fines or be faced with a lawsuit.
Out of curiosity, Anne called the licensing division of the same company to find out how much it would cost to license the same photos for her blog. The answer? $49.50 per photo.
Anne’s lawyer confirmed that unfortunately, the law was on Lots of Stock Photo’s side here; she was better off just paying the fine in order to avoid losing the case and having to pay so much more. Anne learned that big stock photo companies now have software trawling the net for any unlicensed usage of their photos, and they do not have to ask you to take photos down before charging you for them and threatening to sue.
Now that’s an expensive lesson, but it actually could have been a lot worse.
So what can you do?
Where
The good folks at Death to the Stock Photo have pulled together two options for you: a free and a pro. Pro is $5/month and if you have a blog or use photos on a regular basis for your biz, the $5/month is totally worth it (and much cheaper than a lawsuit).
Check out their Facebook page and Instagram too:
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So no more stolen photos, k? Promise? Thanks.
xo
