A cautionary tale if you are still using Flickr Creative Commons licenses for your stock photography images.
I used to be a big fan (back in 2012) as it was a source of real looking people and an antidote to stock photo lady and racially balanced team shots that were all the rage then.
Since then, stock photo sites have improved and there are lots of little niche ones out there for great pics of milennials, arab faces, and of course covid friendly shots.
But I recently heard about a scam being practised by a dastardly German photographer who is scamming businesses by sharing stock shots on the Creative Commons site, with onerous T&C’s that he’s literally banking on people not reading, and then he hits them with a law suit.
He deliberately plants these pics, uses AI software to find them being used, and someone I know of has been hit with a fine of £700. This guy is doing at scale. He is literally making hundreds of thousands on the back of the very human trait of not reading terms and conditions.
