Somewhere on your website is a photograph you didn't take. Someone owns it, and if you can't show how you got the right to use it, you're carrying a risk you've never priced.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Only a court can decide whether a particular use infringes copyright.
Copyright starts when the shutter clicks
Copyright in a photograph exists the moment it is taken: no form, no fee, no © symbol required, so an image with no watermark is still somebody's property. Canadian law counts photographs as "artistic works," which covers logos, charts, icons and the infographic your designer built.
Putting an image on your site means copying it and sending it to visitors, and permission has to come from the owner. Do it without permission and it's infringement whether or not you meant it. There is no "found it on the internet" exception in Canadian law.
Ownership, licence and credit are three different things
A lot of image trouble starts here: the three get used as if interchangeable.
Ownership
What it is: The legal right to control copying and distribution
What it lets you do: Anything, including licensing the image onwardLicence
What it is: Permission to do specific things while ownership stays elsewhere
What it lets you do: Only what the licence says: that use, medium, term and territoryCredit
What it is: Naming the author
What it lets you do: Nothing on its own. It doesn't cure an unlicensed use
Paying someone is not the same as owning their work: hire a photographer and they normally keep the copyright, so you get a licence unless the contract assigns it in writing. Authors also keep moral rights, so even a valid licence may not cover cropping, recolouring or a context that damages their reputation.
What a licence actually lets you do
A licence is a permission with edges: this picture, this use, this long, this country.
Royalty-free does not mean free. You pay once and don't pay a royalty each time you reuse the file. Rights-managed ties the price and the permission to a specific use, placement, print run, period and territory.
- Editorial-only. Can't go in advertising or promotion, and promoting your business is advertising.
- Seats and accounts. Tied to one person or a small team, so an image licensed on a contractor's account may not follow you.
- No logos, no resale. Not as your trade-mark, not redistributed as a file, not offered as a download.
Unsplash and Pexels are real licences, but narrower than assumed: both rule out selling unaltered copies, and Pexels also bars trade-mark use and implying endorsement.
Creative Commons is six licences. The non-commercial variants are the ones to watch, because a site marketing a business is very likely on the wrong side of that line. And a CC licence is only as good as the person who applied it: if they didn't own the image, they couldn't license it to you.
Credit is not permission
Attribution is a condition of some licences, and of the fair-dealing purposes that cover criticism, review and news reporting. It has never been consent. "Photo: @someone" does not create a licence you didn't have, and fair dealing is unlikely to rescue a marketing page: its purposes are a closed list, and selling your own services isn't on it.
The sources that get businesses into trouble
Search engines. Google Images is an index, not a licence. Google's own guidance says images may be subject to copyright and tells you to confirm the licence with the provider and the host site.
Social media. Posting grants a licence to the platform, not to you. Saving, screenshotting or re-posting is copying. Ask the person who posted it, and check that they own it.
Other sites and comps. Copying from a competitor is the same act as copying from a stock site, minus the licence. Watermarked previews aren't licensed for public use.
The people in the picture
Copyright is only half the question. A model release is written permission from a person to use their likeness; a property release covers a building, artwork or branded object. Releases don't come with every download: editorial-only stock and the free libraries leave you without one, while paid stock sometimes covers the model, and the licence will say so where it does. Privacy and advertising law can apply as well: British Columbia's Privacy Act makes it a tort, actionable without proof of damage, to use someone's name or portrait in advertising without consent, and Quebec's Civil Code protects image and privacy.
What it costs when it goes wrong
Enforcing copyright is the rights holder's job, not the copyright office's: the letters come from photographers, agencies and their agents. A court can grant an injunction and award damages, and the owner can instead elect statutory damages: for commercial purposes, $500 to $20,000 per work. Three unlicensed images can mean three awards, plus costs. The limitation period runs three years from when the owner knew or ought to have known of the use, so a demand can arrive long after the image went up.
Keep the paperwork
If you can't produce the receipt, you don't have a licence. You have a story. For each image, keep:
- the invoice
- the licence certificate or ID, and a copy of the terms as they read that day
- the asset ID, photographer's name and the file itself
- where and how you used it, with the page URL and go-live date
- who downloaded it and on which account
- for commissioned work, the contract and releases
Keep the file for as long as the image is in use, plus a margin. Six years past the last use matches the record-keeping habit you already have for tax.
A practical checklist
Before you download
- Decide the use first; the licence follows the use.
- Prefer a source that issues a licence certificate.
- Check for "editorial use only," and check the frame for people, logos and private property.
When you download
- Save the invoice, licence ID and terms as they read that day, and note the account and name on it.
When you publish
- Use the credit exactly as required: title, author, source, licence.
- Don't crop or recolour in ways the licence forbids, and don't imply endorsement.
- Record the page URL and go-live date with the licence.
When it comes down, or a complaint arrives
- Keep the licence file anyway, and check the licence covers a new medium before reusing.
- On a complaint, take the image down, find the licence, and get advice before you reply.
The simplest system is a boring one
Pick two or three image sources you trust and use them by habit. Buy the licence rather than borrow the picture, and file the receipt with the image. That's the whole system: two minutes per image.
If you've made reasonable efforts and still can't find the rights holder, "I couldn't find the photographer" is no defence, but it isn't a dead end either: the Copyright Board of Canada can issue a licence on application.
The owners who stay out of trouble aren't the ones who understand copyright law. They're the ones who can find the receipt.
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