Copyright in website photos, images and words

There is no measurable Australian search volume for this topic under any phrasing tested, and the closest commercial phrasing, “copyright website images australia”, returns nothing at all. Using an image found through a search engine is among the most common and most expensive mistakes a small business makes on its own website, because unlike most website errors it produces a letter — a demand for payment from a business that exists to enforce image licensing.

What follows is general information so that you know what to ask about. It is not legal advice, copyright turns on the particular work and agreement, and a demand letter in your inbox is a reason to get advice rather than to read a web page.

Australian copyright exists the moment photos and images are made, and the copyright owner holds the exclusive right

Under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), copyright in an original work arises automatically when the work is created and recorded. There is no registration system in Australia: nobody files anything to hold the right, and there is no register to search for the owner.

Two beliefs follow from that gap and both are wrong. The absence of a copyright notice means nothing, because no notice is required. And an image being findable through a search engine is not a licence, because a search engine indexes what exists rather than what is free to reuse. Australia has fair dealing exceptions for purposes such as research or study, criticism or review and news reporting. They are narrower than the American idea of fair use, and decorating a commercial page is not among them.

Stock licences: royalty-free is not free

Royalty-free describes how the fee is charged, not whether there is one: a single payment rather than a running royalty, with use still bounded by the licence. Three distinctions do most of the damage.

• Standard versus extended. A standard licence usually caps print runs, merchandise or use in a product for resale. Web use is normally fine; the same image on packaging often is not.

• Editorial only. Editorial images may not be used to promote anything, and many photographs of crowds, buildings and branded objects are editorial-only because of trade marks and releases.

• Transferability. Stock licences are usually granted to the buying account and are not transferable. If a designer bought the image under their own subscription, the licensee may be the designer rather than your business, and the licence may lapse when that subscription does.

• Creative Commons images. “Creative Commons” is not one licence but a family of them, and the differences are not cosmetic: a CC BY licence permits commercial use with attribution, while a CC BY-NC licence forbids commercial use outright. Treating any Commons-licensed photo as automatically free to use on a business site is the same mistake as assuming a royalty-free photo has no conditions at all.

Ask for licences to be bought in your own account, or for written confirmation of the licensee and the permitted use.

Photographs you commission from a photographer

The photographer usually holds copyright unless it is assigned in writing

For a photograph commissioned for a commercial purpose, the general position is that the photographer, as author, holds copyright in those photos unless it is assigned in writing. Paying the invoice buys the shoot and whatever use the agreement describes, not the copyright in the photographer’s photos. Photographs commissioned for private or domestic purposes are treated differently, and older commissions can fall differently again, so an archive of unclear provenance is worth advice.

Why the scope needs to be written down, not assumed

That default is defensible and photographers rely on it. It causes trouble only when the scope is never written down. Write it down: which images, which media, which territories, how long, and whether a future designer can be sublicensed.

Copy, code and everything else a contractor produces

The same default runs through the rest of the build. Work created by an independent contractor generally belongs to the contractor unless copyright is assigned in writing, and most web suppliers, copywriters and photographers are contractors. That is set out in who owns your website, and it is the clause to check before a deposit is paid.

Material you supply: permission and reproducing someone else’s work

Suppliers usually ask for a warranty that you hold the rights to everything you hand over, backed by an indemnity. The clause is reasonable, and it means the risk in the logo pulled from an old brochure, or the paragraph borrowed from a supplier’s site, comes back to you. “It was on the old website” is not provenance; it means the problem is older than you thought.

Fonts, screenshots, Creative Commons photos and other people’s logos, and who owns copyright in them

Font licences are software licences with their own terms

A font is licensed software with its own terms. Desktop, web and app licences are separate, and a web licence is commonly capped by monthly pageviews or restricted to named domains. Self-hosting a font that came with a desktop licence, or one that arrived inside a downloaded theme, is a quiet and frequent breach.

Screenshots and third-party logos carry their own risk

Screenshots contain whatever the screen contained, including someone else’s interface and images. Third-party logos raise trade mark questions as well as copyright. Most large platforms publish brand guidelines setting out what is permitted, and client logos need written permission. The position for images produced by generative tools is unsettled in Australia, so treat that question as open.

If a copyright demand letter arrives, naming the photographer or owner

What a typical demand letter contains

The typical letter comes from a business engaged to enforce image rights, names one image, includes a dated screenshot of the page, asserts a licence fee plus costs and sets a short deadline. It is a claim, not a court order.

The correct response is advice, not payment or silence

The correct response is advice — not payment, and not silence. Whether the sender holds the rights, whether the amount is reasonable and what your position is are questions for a lawyer. Replace the image to stop ongoing use, keep a copy of the page as it stood, and note that removal does not by itself resolve a claim about past use.

The record-keeping habit that prevents all of this

For every image, font, icon and video on the site, keep one row:

• What it is, and where on the site it is used
• Where it came from — the library, the photographer, the client
• The date it was licensed or created
• Who the licensee is, by legal entity name
• What the licence permits, and any cap on pageviews, print or territory
• A saved copy of the licence or receipt

Keep it with the site rather than in a designer’s inbox, and make it a handover deliverable. One row per asset turns a demand letter into a reply.

What to do next

Take the last website built for you and pick five images or photos at random. If you cannot say where each came from and who holds the copyright licence, that is the gap, and it is easier to close while the supplier relationship still exists.

Ask for the asset list above in writing, and that future stock licences be bought in your account. What the contract should say about ownership and warranties is in web design contracts in Australia.

Copyright assignment is a scoping decision, not a closing formality, and it is cheapest to settle before anyone writes anything. What else belongs in that conversation is on website design services.