The Stock Photo Letter: Copyright and Your Website's Images

“I got a letter demanding $1,500 for a photo on my site.” It can arrive years after the website went up, about a picture nobody at the company remembers choosing: a kitchen, a roof, a smiling family on a porch. The letter says the image is owned by someone else, cites the copyright law, and asks for a fee to settle. Some of these letters are legitimate claims. Some are scams. Here is how copyright works for website images, what the law actually lets an owner collect, how to tell which kind of letter you have, and where to get photos you are allowed to use.

Why a photo you found online is not free

The Copyright Office’s Copyright Basics (Circular 1) starts with the rule most people get wrong: “Copyright protection in the United States exists automatically from the moment the original work of authorship is fixed.” A photo is protected the moment it is taken. Registration is not required for that protection, and neither is a © mark; the circular notes that a copyright notice “has not been required since March 1, 1989.” A photo with no notice on it is not a photo with no owner.

The owner holds the exclusive right to reproduce the work and to display it publicly, among others, and a website copies an image and shows it to the public. Finding a picture in an image search is not permission to use it. And the law’s own damages section, below, treats not knowing as a reason to reduce an award, not to cancel it.

What the owner can actually collect

In federal court an owner can ask for actual damages and profits, or instead for statutory damages, a range set by the statute (17 U.S.C. §504(c)):

• The ordinary range. “Not less than $750 or more than $30,000” per work, as the court considers just.
• Willful infringement. The court may raise it to as much as $150,000.
• Innocent infringement. If the infringer proves they were not aware and had no reason to believe their acts were infringing, the court may reduce it to not less than $200.

Registration is the hinge. For works made in the US, registration (or a refusal) is needed before a lawsuit can be filed, according to Circular 1. And under 17 U.S.C. §412, statutory damages and attorney’s fees are not available for an infringement of a published work that began before the registration’s effective date, unless the work was registered within three months after it was first published. Without them, the owner is left with actual damages and profits. The time limit to sue is three years after the claim accrued (§507(b)).

That is why the first useful question about any letter is: when was this photo registered, and when did it go up on your site?

The Copyright Claims Board

There is also a second forum. The Copyright Claims Board, located in the Copyright Office, hears copyright disputes “up to $30,000 total,” as its FAQ puts it. What a contractor needs to know:

• Lower limits. Statutory damages may not exceed $15,000 per work for a timely registered work, or $7,500 per work and $15,000 in total in one proceeding for a work not timely registered (17 U.S.C. §1504(e)).
• How you hear about it. You receive two notices: the first from the party making the claim, normally delivered in person or by mail, and a second, reminder notice from the Board.
• You may opt out. A respondent has 60 days from service to give written notice opting out (§1506(i)). The FAQ adds that if you opt out, the other side can bring the same claim in federal court.
• Ignoring it is the worst choice. If you neither opt out nor take part, the Board “may enter a default determination” and can order you to pay.
• No lawyer required, no travel. “You do not need an attorney to file or respond to a claim,” and proceedings are “handled completely electronically and remotely.”
• Money, not orders. The Board cannot order you to stop using the image, though it can include an agreement to stop that you have made.

Whether to opt out is a real decision with consequences either way; if one of these notices arrives, it is a good moment to talk to a lawyer who handles copyright.

Real demand or scam?

The Copyright Office published a warning in February 2026. It says the Office “does not sue others for copyright infringement. It does not provide legal advice, demand payment by email or text, threaten lawsuits, or require immediate action to avoid penalties.” Anything claiming to come from the Office that does those things is not from the Office.

The same post describes “The Phony Licensing Demand”: a letter asking for an expensive retroactive license, from a sender who “claims to represent a rightsholder but provides no verifiable contact information,” with pressure to pay immediately. Such demands “may rely on vague claims, exaggerated damages, or misstatements about fair use.” Its warning signs include urgent demands for immediate payment or threats of legal action, and requests to pay by gift card, wire transfer or cryptocurrency. Its advice: verify before you respond, save the emails, letters and screenshots, report suspected fraud to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, and search the Copyright Office’s Public Records System, the same place you can look up whether the photo in your letter is registered at all.

A legitimate letter can still ask for more than the claim is worth. The steps below work for both.

What to do this week

1. Do not pay yet, and do not ignore it. Note any deadline in the letter.
2. Find the image and take it down. Removing it stops the display from continuing; it does not erase the past use.
3. Find where it came from. Ask your web designer, check the theme or template the site was built on, and search your email for a stock-site receipt. If you have a license, send a copy and the matter may end there.
4. Ask for proof in writing. The registration number and its effective date, who owns the photo, and proof the sender is authorized to act for the owner. Check the registration yourself in the Public Records System.
5. Compare the dates. If the registration came after your use began, and not within three months of the photo’s first publication, §412 is the section to raise.
6. Answer in writing. Accept, make a counteroffer, or hand it to a copyright lawyer. Keep every message.

On fair use: it is real (17 U.S.C. §107), but courts decide it case by case, weighing four factors, the first of which asks “whether such use is of a commercial nature.” A business website decorating its pages with someone else’s photograph is not a use to build your plan around.

A worked example. Say a landscaping company receives a demand for a patio photo its designer placed on the site in 2022. The owner pulls the image the same day, asks the designer for the license, gets none, and asks the sender for the registration. It turns out the photo was registered in 2024, well after the patio photo went up. That does not make the claim disappear; it changes which remedies the statute allows, and that is worth putting in the written reply or in front of a lawyer.

Photos you may use

• Your own. The safest and the most convincing. A phone photo of your finished work beats any stock image; see Before and After Photos.
• Stock you paid for. Buy the license from the site you download from, read what it allows, and save the receipt or license next to the file.
• Creative Commons, carefully. Creative Commons lists six license types, and every one of them carries conditions; all six include BY, which means “Credit must be given to you, the creator.” NC means “Only noncommercial use of your work is permitted,” defined as use “not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation”; skip NC images for a business website.
• US government works, after checking. USA.gov says work created by a federal officer or employee as part of their official duties is not subject to copyright, but that federal websites may include protected material used with permission, and that state and local government works may be protected. It advises checking with the agency first.
• A manufacturer’s photos, with permission. If you install a brand’s products, ask the manufacturer in writing which images its installers may use.

Then keep a simple photo log: the file name, where it came from, the license or “taken by us,” and the date. It takes a minute per image and turns the next letter, if one comes, into a one-email answer.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.