Taking photographs requires patience, skill and creativity. Press and photo agencies often employ several professional photographers, and it is only right that they should receive a fair compensation for their work.

Copyright Machine BV distributes images for many photographers. We help them to have online infringements on their copyright redressed, by offering a valid license to persons, organizations and companies that use those images without such a required license. The retroactive license offered by Copyright Machine legitimizes the past use.

You have used the image(s) on your website without the author’s permission. That constitutes an infringement on his copyright. Even if you decide to no longer use the image(s) in the future, a compensation is still owed. The license offered to you is a license for online use for a limited duration (the past use plus an additional year in the future). Even if you stop using the image(s), this will not change the amount of the claimed compensation.

Under copyright law, you yourself are liable for the use of images on your website, even if those were put there by an employee or a supplier. You are, of course, free to contact the person who actually placed the image(s) on your website.

If you place third party materials (such as blog posts, product leaflets, presentations …) on your website, you are required to verify with that third party whether he has permission to use those materials. Indeed, you are liable for all the materials you place on your website, even when those were supplied by someone else.

Contact us as soon as possible by e-mail (legal@copyrightmachine.in), if possible, or else by phone [(+91) 9599444891]. If it turns out to be correct and you already have a valid license, then we will obviously immediately close the dossier, and we will correct the information in our database.

Our letter is a request to purchase a correct license. It is entirely up to you whether you accept our offer, or not. Should you decide not to accept, then the photographer and we do of course reserve the right to initiate a legal procedure for a copyright infringement.

More information on the tariffs and costs can be found on the page with the tariffs, where you can find all the details per photographer/agency.

After payment of the license note, you automatically have a license for the image(s) mentioned in that note. The license is subject to the license conditions you can find in attachment.

Images found via Google Images are often copyright protected. Google Images also mentions this explicitly: “Images may be subject to copyright”. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the required license, before you use the images.

The fact that no author is mentioned on or near a photograph, does not mean that the photographer has relinquished his rights to that photograph. Indeed, there is no obligation to put © or ‘copyright’ on a work. Copyright arises automatically for the author and must be respected, even when his name is not mentioned.

The image testifies to the intellectual efforts of the photographer. This becomes clear from, among others, his original choices regarding lighting and exposure time, camera and lense, distance between the photographer and the object (relative size of the object), position of the body and the angle, these choices result in a specific composition with certain characteristics, and, as such, they contribute to the individual character of the work. The originality of the works is not in question.

Copyright protects the author of an original work against the unauthorized use of his work, including unauthorized copies or adaptations of the work.
Copyright typically protects the work of artists such as writers, painters and photographers, but it would be wrong to think that copyright only protects works of art. Indeed, it also protects, for instance, a photograph used as an illustration in a scientific article. Copyright protection even extends to utensils, technical and scientific works, etc., as long as the requirements regarding expression and originality are met.