My photos are being used without permission

Establish that you own it

For photographs this is usually straightforward, and the evidence is better than people expect.

• ✓The original full-resolution file. Theirs is almost always a downscaled copy of yours, which is close to conclusive on its own.
• ✓Camera metadata. Capture date, device, lens and settings are written by the camera and are very hard to fabricate convincingly.
• ✓The adjacent frames. Photographers have the shots either side of the one that was taken. Nobody who downloaded a single JPEG does.
• ✓A registration, if you have one. Not required to file, but it is what unlocks statutory damages in a US court.

If you commissioned the photographs rather than taking them, find the contract before doing anything else. In the US the photographer owns the copyright by default, and paying an invoice does not transfer it.

Check it is not fair use before you accuse anyone

Photographs attract more genuine fair-use arguments than text does, because they get used in commentary, criticism and reporting — all of which are named in § 107.

A competitor using your product shot to sell the same product is not fair use on any reading. A review article using the same photo while discussing the product is a real argument. A news story using it to report on your company is likely fine.

You are expected to have formed a good-faith belief that the use is not fair before sending a notice. Our fair-use check walks the four factors and hands you a written record of the reasoning, which is exactly what the duty calls for.

Where the notice goes

Depends entirely on where the photo is published. A website means the hosting provider’s designated agent. A marketplace means that marketplace’s own copyright process. A social platform means its report form. Google Images means a separate de-index request that takes the image out of results without touching the page it is on.

Our host lookup finds the hosting provider, the registrar and an abuse contact for any domain, and the notice generator writes the document. Both are free and neither needs an account.

If you would rather not do this yourself

The work is not hard so much as fiddly and easy to abandon. Finding the right designated agent, writing six statutory elements correctly, following up when nothing happens, escalating to the proxy, filing the search de-index separately, and checking again a month later — each step is small and the whole thing takes weeks of attention.

We do that for a fixed price agreed before anything is filed, and you are invoiced only if the image actually comes down. If it comes back after a counter-notice, the invoice is voided, and if you had already paid we refund it without being asked.

How your photographs get found in the first place

Understanding how your images end up elsewhere tells you which defence is worth the effort, because the routes are different and so are the fixes.

Right-click and save

The overwhelming majority. Someone browsing your site takes what they need. Nothing technical stops this, because any image a browser can display, a browser can save.

Hotlinking

They embed your image URL directly, so your server pays the bandwidth to display it on their page. This one you can stop outright with a referrer rule, and doing so breaks their page immediately.

Automated scraping

A script pulls every image on your site, usually alongside the text. Volume is the tell: if forty of your photographs appear at once, nobody browsed.

Marketplace and catalogue reuse

Your listing images pulled by another seller, often automatically by a tool built for exactly that purpose.

Social reposting

Your image reposted without credit or licence. Platform report forms handle these faster than anything else in this list.

Watermarking deters casual copying and makes a later claim easier to argue, because removing the watermark is separately actionable. It does not stop a determined copyist, who will crop or clone it out — but doing so converts a careless act into a deliberate one, which is useful to you.

Disabling right-click does essentially nothing and annoys legitimate visitors. Serving lower-resolution images is a real trade-off worth considering: the thief gets a worse copy, and your original at full resolution remains the decisive piece of evidence.

What this costs you commercially

Worth being clear-eyed about, because it determines how much effort is proportionate.

• ✓Direct substitution. A competitor using your photography to sell the same product is taking sales you would have made. This is the version worth real money and real effort.
• ✓Brand dilution. Your carefully shot images attached to a cheaper or counterfeit version of the product, which customers then associate with you.
• ✓Search competition. Your images ranking for someone else, especially in image search where visual results drive discovery.
• ✓Licensing revenue lost. Relevant for photographers and illustrators, mostly irrelevant for a seller whose images only ever supported their own listings.
• ✓Nothing much at all. Sometimes the honest answer. An unrelated blog in another country using one of your photos may cost you precisely nothing, and acting on it is a choice about principle rather than money.

We would rather you reached the last conclusion yourself than paid us to reach it for you. The scan is free partly so that the decision is made with the full picture in front of you instead of a sales call.