Copyright
This evidently bears explaining.
Photographers own the copyright to their images. Period. Hard stop. Whether it’s me taking a photo with a high-end camera, you taking a photo with your phone, or your kid taking a picture with that junky little tablet you got them — as soon as the shutter was clicked, that person became a copyright holder.
Copyright is a term designating ownership of an intellectual property. No different than the title for your car. Your car is your physical property, my photos are my intellectual property.
(Aside: A few years ago a primate got ahold of a camera and took some pictures — was quite a debate as to whether that primate was a legal copyright holder.)
Anyway, back to our story.
I own the copyright to my images. I license them to clients — real estate agents, builders, landlords, VRBO hosts, interior designers, stagers — on my terms. “You can use this image for X number of days/months/years.” But I still hold the copyright, which means I can license them to someone else, I can put them on my website, I can post them to Instagram — anything I like. I can license them to Agent_A for $200 and to Agent_B for 1ยข. My property, my right.
Sometimes as part of licensing I also let agents use other images — stock images of the area — to use with that listing and that listing only. Right there in the delivery email: stock images of nearby features are for use with this listing only.
These stock images are my most stolen images. Agents listing homes in a neighborhood steal them from online or other listings and use them in their own.
For years I tried to be polite: “Hey, I see you’re using my image without permission — those are for my clients. Please remove from your listing.”
This was met with “Oh, sorry” or “I found it online, so I can use it.” Then I have to explain all this again. And sometimes reach out to their broker who usually understands copyright a lot better.
(Another aside: My personal favorite was an asshat who said that (a) I should watermark the images [not allowed according to MLS] and that (b) he found it online and sent me what he’d found online — and the filename was an MLS number of another listing that had been using the images with my permission. Note: finding something online doesn’t mean it’s free.)
But it’s been a process of Whack-A-Moron trying to get it to stop. Then I discovered there’s a service called Pixsy that searches out your images and pursues licensing to those people and will take them to court to get the fee. They take a cut. I don’t care — they’re welcome to a cut for all they do.
For the people who say I should just ask them to stop using my images, I tried that. See above.
And if someone stole your car would you ask them to return it and wait or would you report it stolen to the police? Similarly, if you told someone they could use your car for one day for $100 and they brought it back in a week, would that be cool to you? Or would you want the other $600 they screwed you out of?
Can I take your car and use it to make $30,000 and then return it to you and not compensate you? That’s what you’re doing when you’re using someone’s photos without permission. Doesn’t matter if it’s 1 photo out of 50 — it’s still theft.
So, the simple test is: If your photographer didn’t provide it to you, and you didn’t take it, it’s not yours to use. Don’t use it. Or be prepared to pay.