The Importance Of Best Practices

It’s easy to get caught up in the details of working in your business. There are customers to please, deliverables and deadlines. You might outsource some tasks simply because you don’t have the time or skill to take on those jobs. That makes a lot of sense, but before you send off that project, it’s important that you set rules and processes to ensure that outsourcing doesn’t cost you more than you planned.

Once Upon A Time There Was A Business Doing Almost Everything Right…

Let me pass along the story of a recent client who learned this the hard way (and who agrees that I should share this so that no one else has to endure her hardship). She was building her business, and trying to do all the right things. She protected her brand and was careful in her marketing to use only images that she created or had clear permission to use from partners, customers or colleagues. 

She knew that she could not use third party photos in any of her marketing, especially for her social media. And so she licensed images from Adobe for this purpose. Smart!

But while she was following all the best practices to run her business right, she did not necessarily carry that through to her subcontractors. When she hired a freelancer to help with her social media marketing, she specifically instructed them to use the images that she expressly licensed for this purpose. She did not, however, follow up on every action they took on her behalf. And this is where her great mistake happened. 

My client, satisfied that she had provided what her freelancer needed, went about building her business. A year later, she received a letter from an attorney claiming to represent the photographers whose work appeared in her social media. And he was demanding thousands in damages.

Cue the Copyright Troll.

It turns out that the social media contractor decided to use images outside of those licensed by the client. And the images she chose belonged to high end photographers. 

Copyright Infringement & Your Business

I asked a digital marketing expert I know for advice about this, and how businesses might avoid this trap. She explained, “Social media content curation is a tricky business. Often businesses think that they can hire a freelancer and ‘set and forget’ what’s happening on their channels, but this is very risky. It’s important that the owner or marketing leader have set rules in place for their third party providers, and conduct frequent check-ins about activities and what content is shared. This helps to both prevent mistakes from happening, and reduce risk from shared content.”

Unfortunately for my client, this process wasn’t followed. While she was not personally responsible for the content shared, as the business owner, she was liable for the mistake. U.S. Copyright law allows for strict liability and statutory damages. That means that the damages are included in the law itself, and apply, regardless of whether there was intent to infringe.

$25,000 mistake!

When the client received the letter from the attorney, she immediately removed the offending images from her social media. However, the damage is already done, and these statutory damages now apply. The law allows for an award of $750 – $150,000 per work infringed, plus attorneys’ fees. 

For my client, there was no doubt as to liability. The only question to answer was the size of the penalty she would pay for her freelancer’s mistake. 

Moving forward, this business (and her contractor) has learned the hard way that if you don’t own the images, don’t post or repost them. Use images only with permission of the owner. And document everything. Best practices can only be best if you apply them.

Have a question about the use of images? Contact us. Avoid costly mistakes like this one with our help.