This year I found out that a few photographs on a blog can cost more than the blog will ever earn. I put them there in good faith. I thought a picture on the internet was a picture I could use, I had no idea I was wrong, and I’m certainly not the first person to learn it the hard way.
Then the letters started.
There are companies that make a business out of hunting for image use, and they are very good at it. They found photos on my blog that I didn’t hold the right paperwork for. I’ve paid one claim. Another collapsed completely when I showed that they had made a mistake. One is still being argued, because I don’t believe the photos they’re pointing at are the ones they say they are. And last week a fresh one turned up, demanding hundreds of pounds for a photo I took down a long time ago, from a post that isn’t on my site and isn’t on any of my social channels.
I’d love to tell you I laughed it off. I didn’t. One of those claims came as a printed letter, posted to my home, and that feels deeply personal. I know it isn’t. I’m a line in a spreadsheet and the process doesn’t care who I am. But the doormat doesn’t know that, and neither does your stomach at three in the morning.
Nobody talks about what it does to you. The not knowing what’s coming next. The lying awake doing sums that never work. The jolt of panic when an email lands with a certain kind of subject line. The low, grey weight of knowing that a small business that barely breaks even can be sunk by something you did without knowing it was wrong. I earn nothing from this blog. Its only job was to introduce people to the brand, and now it has become the most expensive thing I own.
So I’ve started calling them vampires. It helps more than it should. They don’t make anything. They don’t sell anything you’d want to wear. They live on the mistakes of people who were never trying to hurt anyone, and they would very much like you to be frightened, because frightened people pay quickly. They also arrive uninvited and they hate daylight. I made a mistake, not a crime, and one of these claims has already fallen over because the other side made a mistake of their own. Funny how that part never makes it into the letter.
The useful part is this. If you put photographs on a website, find out where they came from and keep the receipt. If you play the radio in your shop, find out what licence that needs. Fonts, songs, clips, maps, whatever it is, learn the rules before you need to, because learning them afterwards costs about ten times as much and arrives by post. And be aware that taking something down doesn’t always mean it’s forgotten. Garlic is cheap. Sunlight is free. A valid licence sits somewhere in between.
If you’re in the middle of something like this, or something worse that has nothing to do with photographs, and the panic comes at night, please tell someone. A friend, family, your GP. Money trouble feels shameful and it shouldn’t, because it is far more common than anyone admits, and it shrinks a little every time you say it out loud. I’m learning that too.
The fires will never stop and the vampires will keep coming. But I’m quicker with the bucket than I was in January, and I know exactly where the stakes are kept. I’m still here, still making clothes, still writing. They can keep their filing cabinets. I’ll be over here sharpening the stake.
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