Last year, a client of ours received an email that stopped them dead in their tracks. It was a formal copyright infringement notice, alleging unauthorised use of a single image in a long-since-archived blog post that was nearly ten years old. The email demanded payment of nearly $10,000 within two weeks to avoid escalating legal action.
On investigation, it became clear this was not spam. The notice had come from one of a new breed of digital copyright enforcement agencies that use advanced automated tools to crawl the web, identify potential copyright violations, and pursue anyone deemed to have infringed on images, video, fonts, audio files, or any other form of copyright-protected digital asset.
Unfortunately, this scenario is no longer an edge case. Copyright enforcement of online digital assets has intensified sharply across New Zealand and Australia, and small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly in the crosshairs. Enforcement agencies use bots to scan publicly accessible websites, social media accounts, and even server-hosted files that may not appear anywhere on your website but remain discoverable online, matching assets against licensed libraries and flagging unauthorised use at scale.
Your business is being scanned whether you know it or not. The case above involved a single image uploaded by a long-gone freelancer. Others in my business network have shared genuinely eye-watering stories: clients hit with multi-asset violations running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and cases where a licence that was valid at the time of publication was subsequently revoked, leaving businesses exposed to claims for assets they believed they had every right to use.
Who Is Pursuing These Claims & Are They Legitimate?
Digital copyright enforcement in New Zealand and globally is carried out by a range of agencies. Some act directly on behalf of photographers, image libraries, and content creators. A new breed operate on a more aggressive and volume-focused enforcement model, scanning the web for potential infringements and pursuing claims on their own initiative, all in the pursuit of a tidy little payday at your expense.
Companies operating in this space include PicRights, headquartered in Pfäffikon, Switzerland, who represent major image libraries including Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse. They are active in New Zealand, Australia, and other markets, and are particularly prolific in this space. PicRights is not a law firm and cannot sue you directly, but they refer unresolved claims to IP law firms in multiple jurisdictions, who can and do initiate legal proceedings.
This article is a practical guide for New Zealand businesses on how to manage the risks of copyright violation and what to do if a claim arrives. If you'd like further reading on how these enforcement agencies operate the Sprintlaw guide is a useful Australian-law perspective.
A Practical Framework for NZ Businesses to Reduce Exposure
Prevention is significantly less costly than resolution. The following framework is designed for New Zealand small and medium businesses to systematically identify and address digital copyright exposure across all online channels.
Step 1: Audit Website Images and Videos for Copyright Risk
Images and video represent the highest risk category and the vast majority of enforcement claims. A thorough audit should cover:
- Every image and video on your website (and on the server), including archived blog posts and older content. Each one should be reviewed, attributed, and documented.
- Your CMS or website media library, including files that are no longer in active use but remain on the server and publicly accessible including staging and testing versions.
- Your social media accounts: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc and any other platforms going back as far as accessible (delete anything that no longer serves a purpose).
- Online email marketing templates and old online presentations should be cleaned up or removed.
- Display advertising and paid social assets. Many standard stock image licences do not cover paid advertising use, and freelancers, contractors, and staff have historically played fast and loose with sourcing assets.
For every asset, the question is the same: can you produce a licence, receipt, or documented proof of origin? If the answer is no, the asset should be removed or replaced with a properly licensed alternative. Delete anything that no longer serves a purpose or won’t be used in the future as it will make your life easier down the line.
Step 2: Review Secondary Digital Assets
Fonts used on your website, audio files embedded in video content, and template designs sourced from third parties are all subject to copyright protection. These are targeted less frequently than images but the legal exposure is equivalent. Apply the same standard: if provenance cannot be confirmed, treat the asset as a liability.
Step 3: Establish a Single Point of accountability
One of the most common reasons NZ businesses find themselves exposed is that digital assets have been uploaded by multiple people over many years: staff members, contractors, web developers, marketing agency juniors, with no consistent standard and no central record.
Designate a single person or your agency as responsible for approving and documenting all digital content before publication. Maintain a simple asset register recording the source, licence type, and acquisition date for every significant asset. It's a slightly painful exercise, but it can pay for itself fifty times over and avoid significant business disruption.
The other half of accountability is contractual. Make sure your agreements with contractors, freelancers, web developers, and marketing agencies include an indemnification clause for image and content licensing. In plain terms: if the supplier provides an asset and it turns out to be unlicensed, the supplier carries the cost of any resulting claim, not you. This is good business hygiene, and everyone knows who is responsible and who carries the risk for what.
Step 4: Use properly licensed image and Media Sources
Free, high-quality, commercially licensed images are widely available. There is no practical reason to use unlicensed assets. Recommended sources include:
- Free: Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay all offer images suitable for commercial use. Always read the individual licence terms as restrictions vary, particularly around paid advertising.
- Paid: Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Getty Images provide broad commercial licences with clear documentation. Retain receipts and licence confirmations.
A quick word on terminology: "royalty-free" does not mean "free." Royalty-free means you pay once and can use the image without paying ongoing royalties for each use. It does not mean the image is free to download, and it does not mean the licence has no restrictions. Most royalty-free licences cap the number of impressions, restrict use in paid advertising, or require additional licensing for merchandise, broadcast, or templates. Always read the actual licence terms for each asset, particularly if you are using the image in paid media or commercial products.
- Commissioned: Photography and video commissioned specifically for your business carries no third-party licence risk and is always the most defensible option. A real-world, good-quality photo and video shoot of your actual business will generally resonate more with your target audience than any stock asset.
Step 5: Schedule an Audit Cycle
Digital asset libraries grow continuously, and staff turn over. An audit completed today will need repeating and the ideal cadence depends largely on the business circumstances and any existing protocols. Build a 12-month or 24-month review cycle into your business calendar and treat it as a standard compliance obligation. If you've documented the first audit well and applied protocol, subsequent audits should be fairly quick and easy.
A New Frontier: AI-Generated Images and Video
If you are using AI image tools to generate visuals for your website, social media, or marketing campaigns, you have a new exposure category to think about. The legal position on AI-generated content is genuinely unsettled, and it differs sharply from one tool to the next.
A few examples of where the lines currently sit:
- Adobe Firefly trains on Adobe Stock content and offers explicit commercial-use indemnification for enterprise customers. This is currently the most defensible AI image tool for business use.
- Midjourney and DALL-E offer commercial-use rights under their paid plans, but their training data is the subject of active litigation. Whether output that closely resembles a copyrighted work creates downstream liability is not yet settled (this is one to watch).
- Getty Images sued Stability AI in the UK and US over the training of Stable Diffusion on its image library. The UK High Court ruled in November 2025 that the AI model itself is not an infringing copy, but found that early versions did infringe Getty's trademarks by generating distorted Getty watermarks. Getty is appealing. The appeal, and parallel cases in the US, will continue to reshape the rules.
For NZ businesses the practical takeaway is that AI-generated imagery is not a free pass. The biggest risk isn't the training data, it's the output: any AI-generated image that includes a recognisable trademark, watermark, or likeness is a problem regardless of which tool produced it. Keep records of which tool generated each image, under which licence tier, and on what date. If a tool's terms of use change or a court ruling later restricts commercial use of certain outputs, you will need that paper trail.
Treat AI-generated assets the same way you treat any other digital asset: source, licence, date, in the register.
What to Do If You Receive a Copyright Infringement Notice
If your business receives a formal copyright claim, whether from PicRights or any other enforcement agency, the following steps represent a practical and measured approach. This is not legal advice; for matters involving significant sums or complex circumstances, seek qualified legal assistance.
1. Acknowledge receipt promptly. A brief response confirming you have received the notice and are reviewing it is not an admission of liability. It demonstrates good faith and can slow escalation, buying you valuable time.
2. Remove the asset(s) immediately. Take the identified content down from your website, social media, and any other accessible location without delay. This removes the ongoing infringement and demonstrates a willingness to cooperate.
3. Investigate thoroughly. Check your records, your agency's records, and any historical correspondence for evidence of how the asset was acquired. Whether you have a licence or proof of purchase may be central to the outcome. Tools like the Wayback Machine are very useful for seeing when the asset first appeared online and Google Analytics might tell you how much the asset has been viewed in its lifespan.
4. Communicate on facts only. This is critical. Respond only to what is directly asked. Do not volunteer information, offer explanations, or present mitigating circumstances in written communications. Additional context provided voluntarily can be used to build the case against you. Stick strictly to the facts of the specific claim. Do not show any of your hand: it will be used against you.
5. Do not assume the claim is valid. Enforcement claims sometimes contain errors: incorrect images, wrong dates, or assets that were properly licensed. Challenge anything that does not hold up, but do so factually and without hostility.
6. Seek professional advice if the matter is beyond your capability to manage. This process can be stressful for the business owner and resource intensive. If the claim involves a significant sum, multiple assets, or is escalating, engage a solicitor with intellectual property experience before making further written responses or any payment. You'll have to shell out for this, and it can feel like it's just adding to the cost of the claim, which it does. Weigh that against the disruption to your business, and factor in that a good solicitor will likely be able to significantly reduce the value of the sum being claimed, or cease the action altogether.
Our client followed this approach without engaging legal counsel. The claim was investigated, specific factual grounds for challenge were identified, and the claimed sum was rejected without litigation and without admission of liability.
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure
The time spent auditing and cleaning up your digital assets is a very good investment when weighed against the cost of defending yourself against an expensive copyright claim, even one that is successfully resolved.
Storm IMC offers digital asset compliance audits as part of our website and content marketing services. We'll review your website, social channels, and server-hosted files, document everything that's in use, identify exposure, and give you a clean asset register going forward. It's not glamorous work, but it's significantly cheaper than a copyright claim. Get in touch for a no-obligation review of your exposure.
As I started with a good quote, it seems fitting to end on one. JFK: "the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."
Ronan Nichol is the founder of Storm IMC, a full-service digital marketing agency based on Auckland's North Shore. Storm IMC works with New Zealand businesses on web strategy, content marketing, paid search, AI-SEO, and marketing automation. This article provides general information only and does not constitute legal advice.
