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Accidental copyright violation is a liability in almost any online business.

It's not okay, but it's also not a HUGE crime. This is a civil matter, worst case it'll cost some money as they buy a license after the fact... or pay settlement in court.

It's perfectly reasonable to NOT stifle your organization with cumbersome processes to verify licenses.. Because these things rarely happens, and when they do are often worked out at low cost.

The DMCA says to stop infringement upon notification. It doesn't specify unlimited penalties for accidental infringement. If so YouTube and most of the internet would die at the hands of greedy copyright holders.




In most of these types of jobs you directly bill the client for licence acquisition for the type of usage (after the client approves the artwork/design).

Forget to do that and now you need to pay out for acquiring the licence afterwards - and you'd better hope there was nobody identifiable in it because getting a modelling release afterwards can be even more expensive (after all, both the photographer and the model know they have you over a barrel).

Also don't bother billing the client afterwards, after that kind of screw up you'll be on eggshells with the client. Do it twice and you definitely won't have a client to worry about.


If implementing a lightweight process to vet designs would cost less than the cost of settlements/judgments, then it would make sense to implement some process. Companies that want to stay in business have to put on their Grownup pants and get serious about risk mitigation.


small things like this is a tiny risk.. as is the risk it'll be discovered..

let's be fair, little harm was done here..


Sorry, I missed the accident part. Where in the narrative was the accident?




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