Disclaimer and why this post matters
Up front: this post is not legal advice. For specific disputes, a lawyer specializing in copyright should take the helm. What this post does: give a pragmatic overview of the most common rights questions that concern web designers, bloggers, and content creators in 2026.
Basic rule: images are automatically protected
In the EU, the UK, the US, and most of the world, copyright is automatic: every image that reaches a certain threshold of originality is protected from the moment of its creation. It needs no registration, no copyright symbol, no deposit. The author is the natural person who created the image — usually the photographer.
This applies to seemingly "free" sources like Google Image search, Pinterest screenshots, or Instagram too. Put an image found there on your own website without a license and you commit copyright infringement — regardless of whether the website is commercial or not.
Three legal routes to images
- Your own shots. You're the author, you have full rights. But: if people are depicted, the right to one's own image comes into play (see below).
- A license from the author. Stock providers, a direct license from the photographer, Creative Commons platforms.
- Public domain images. Works whose protection has expired (author dead at least 70 years in the EU/US), or ones the author has explicitly released.
Understanding stock photo licenses 2026
The major stock providers have roughly three license types in 2026:
- Royalty-Free (RF). One-time purchase, unlimited use in the permitted contexts. Standard at Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, iStock. Note: "royalty-free" doesn't mean "free of charge" — it means "no repeat license fees".
- Rights-Managed (RM). A license per specific use (print run, region, period). More expensive, but more exclusive — someone buying an image for a brand campaign doesn't want it appearing in a competitor's banner at the same time.
- Editorial-Use-Only. Only for editorial use — news, blog posts. No marketing campaigns. For many celebrity images and sports shots the only available license.
Creative Commons — the free licenses
Creative Commons (CC) has been the most important license system for free content since 2002. Six variants:
- CC0: completely free, no conditions. Like public domain.
- CC BY: use permitted with author attribution.
- CC BY-SA: use permitted, but redistribution only under the same license (share-alike).
- CC BY-NC: non-commercial use only. Note: any website with ads counts as commercial.
- CC BY-ND: use permitted, but no modification.
- CC BY-NC-ND: non-commercial, no modification.
Important sources for CC images: Wikimedia Commons, Unsplash (its own license, similar to CC0), Pixabay, Pexels, Openverse (a CC search engine).
AI-generated images — the open question
The legal status of AI images is only partly settled in 2026:
USA (US Copyright Office, as of 2024): AI images without significant human originality aren't copyrightable. That means: a pure Midjourney image from a text prompt falls into the public domain. Whoever uses it need ask no one's permission — but no one can license it exclusively either.
EU (CJEU and national courts, as of 2025): a similar line. AI images without sufficient human processing aren't protectable. But: if a human substantially selects, changes, and post-processes, a derivative-work protection can arise.
EU AI Act (in force since August 2024): AI-generated images must be machine-readably marked as such (watermarking, C2PA metadata). Violations are sanctioned from 2026. So if you share Midjourney images on your blog, you should mark them as AI-generated.
A deeper discussion of the "online generators vs. AI" question is in our dedicated post on that topic.
Photos of people and the right to one's own image
As soon as a photo shows a recognizable person, the right to one's own image comes on top of copyright (in the EU under GDPR Art. 6 and national image-rights law). Publication needs the consent of the person shown. Typical exceptions:
- Public figures (politicians, celebrities in a public function).
- Incidental alongside a landscape (a person accidentally in the background of a landscape shot).
- Assemblies, demonstrations, concerts (overview shots).
GDPR makes it stricter in 2026: for commercial use practically always written consent of the person, documented for at least 3 years.
Brands in images
If a well-known brand logo is visible in your photo (a Coca-Cola bottle, an Apple logo on a laptop), it becomes a trademark question. Three constellations:
- Brand incidental in the background: usually unproblematic.
- Brand as the image's focus, non-advertising use: often allowed (reporting, comparison).
- Brand in your own advertising: trademark infringement, except with the express license of the trademark owner.
What's missing in the photo — IPTC and Schema.org
Maintaining license information explicitly documents compliance and helps SEO at the same time (see our image SEO post). IPTC fields: Copyright Notice, Creator, Rights Usage Terms. Schema.org ImageObject: creator, copyrightHolder, license, creditText. Google has used these fields for license badges in image search since 2020.
Watermarks as protection
To protect your own photos, you can use visible watermarks (brand, domain) or invisible digital watermarks. Note: cropping off a watermark counts legally as copyright infringement, so it's clear evidence.
Checklist before every image publication
- Do I have the license to use this image?
- Does the license allow the intended use (commercial, modification)?
- Must I name the author? If so, is the credit visible?
- Does the image show people? Have they consented?
- Are there recognizable brands in the image that are problematic for my purpose?
- For AI images: is the AI generation marked (EU AI Act)?
- Have I maintained IPTC and Schema.org fields?
Sources
WIPO — Copyright · GDPR (EU 2016/679) · EU AI Act · Creative Commons — License overview · US Copyright Office — AI Guidance · C2PA — Content Provenance Standard · IPTC Photo Metadata.