How photo licensing works in Australia
The plain-English version. What a licence is, what it should put in writing, and the rights you keep when you grant one.
A photo licence is permission to use a photo for a defined purpose. It is not a sale of the photo. Copyright stays with the photographer. The buyer gets a defined set of rights, and only those rights.
The legal basis
Under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), the author of an original artistic work is the first owner of the copyright. A photograph is an artistic work. The owner can grant a licence to someone else to do specific things with it (display it, print it, modify it, sublicense it) without giving up ownership.
What every licence should state
- Scope: what the buyer can do with the photo (website, print campaign, packaging, internal training).
- Term: how long the rights last (one campaign, two years, perpetual).
- Territory: where the photo can be used (Australia only, global).
- Exclusivity: non-exclusive (default) or exclusive (you cannot sell it elsewhere during the term).
- Editorial or commercial: commercial use usually needs a model release for identifiable people.
- Credit requirements.
- What is not allowed (typically: resale of the photo, training AI, use as a logo).
Editorial vs commercial
Editorial use illustrates news, education, or commentary. A magazine, a blog post, a documentary. Commercial use promotes a product or service. An ad, packaging, branded content. Commercial use almost always needs a model release and often a property release. Editorial use generally does not, in Australia.
Exclusive vs non-exclusive
Non-exclusive is the default. You can sell the same photo to multiple buyers. Exclusive means only one buyer has the rights during the term. Exclusive should cost much more (typically 5 to 10 times the non-exclusive price for the same term).
How PhotoSale licenses work
Every licence on PhotoSale shows scope, term, and territory on the listing. Buyers pay through the platform, the licence record is emailed and stored in their account, and the photographer is paid out monthly. Read the buyer licensing terms for the standard scopes.
Things that go wrong
- No written record. "You can use the photo for your brochure" is not a licence, it is a future argument.
- Buyer reuses outside scope. Charge for the new use, do not pretend you did not notice.
- Photo ends up in a training dataset. Disallowed by the buyer licence; pursue it.
- Photographer forgets they granted exclusivity and sells the same photo to someone else. Keep a register.