IT 
EN 
The fortress paradox: how "Fear Marketing" is killing the creative industry (and why AI is grateful)
It's a Tuesday morning in November 2025. I open the agency's email and amongst the usual newsletters and spam, there's a request from a client forwarding me a communication from an international law firm specialising in copyright protection. The kind of email every professional in our sector dreads.
Four pages in English, formal tone but unequivocal. It contests the use of an image without proper authorisation on an article from their blog published over a year earlier. The photo had been downloaded from a stock platform for which they pay a regular annual subscription. Or at least, so they believed.
The message doesn't explain exactly which specific clause was violated amongst the dozens of pages of terms and conditions. But it quantifies the damage with precision: a four-figure sum "by way of compensation". The usual legal formulas follow: deadline for response, mention of "further action", prospect of additional costs.
The contested image? A generic photograph of a working environment. One of those "atmospheric" images used on corporate blogs. Nothing particularly distinctive or exclusive.
Their story isn't isolated. It's a pattern I observe increasingly often in our sector. Agencies and professionals who, despite regularly paying subscriptions to international stock platforms, live in a state of permanent anxiety. Not due to dishonesty or negligence, but because the system itself is constructed in such a way that "total compliance" requires legal expertise that goes beyond that of a creative director or marketing manager.
The result? A stark paradox. Never before have we had access to millions of professional images. Never before have honest professionals been so afraid to use them.
And whilst the traditional market becomes a bureaucratic minefield, here's the alternative materialising: generative artificial intelligence. Images created in a few seconds, at negligible costs, and above all – this is the point – without the terror of the letter arriving two years later.
At Insight ADV we experience this tension daily. We have active subscriptions to various stock platforms, we pay hundreds of euros a year to "do things properly". Yet, increasingly often, at the end of the licence verification process, documentary screenshots, checks and rechecks, we decide not to use that particular image. We prefer to shoot the photos ourselves or, lately, we generate them with AI.
This is the paradox of the fortress: when defending a legitimate right becomes more costly and risky for the client than renouncing it, the system isn't protecting anyone. It's simply digging its own grave.
And it's not just a photography problem. It's the exact same pattern that devastated the music industry twenty years ago, that's putting the Italian digital infrastructure at risk with the TV rights issue, and that in general characterises every industry that responds to technological innovation with an iron fist rather than with accessibility.
In this reflection, we'll analyse how this model – which we could define as "Fear Marketing" – is accelerating the end of the very markets it aims to protect. And why the only real winner, in the end, will be artificial intelligence.
The siege syndrome
There's a feeling that anyone working today in the world of communications, marketing or content production knows well. It's a sort of underlying anxiety, white noise that accompanies every creative choice. It's not the anxiety of the blank page, nor that of an imminent deadline. It's something more bureaucratic and, for this reason, more insidious.
It's the fear of having committed an invisible mistake.
We live in a paradoxical era. Never before have we had access to such an immense quantity of creative resources, and never before has the use of these resources been surrounded by a legal minefield so dense as to discourage their use.
At Insight ADV we observe this phenomenon with growing concern. Not because we don't believe in the sacrosanct protection of copyright – our work is based on the value of ideas and their execution, I'm personally registered with SIAE, I'm an ordinary member of the Italian Copywriters' Association – but because we see a business model emerging that I would define, without fear of exaggeration, as toxic. A model that, in the desperate attempt to protect the profits of an era now concluded, is adopting excessively aggressive protection strategies towards the only subject that could still save the market: the customer.
This approach, which we could define as "Fear Marketing", is based on a mistaken assumption: that you can oblige the market to consume an obsolete or poorly distributed product through the threat of sanction.
The recent history of the digital economy demonstrates exactly the opposite. When an industry responds to technological innovation by erecting legal walls and treating its users as potential criminals, it's not protecting its future. It's simply writing its own death sentence, accelerating the mass migration towards alternatives that are simpler, more economical and, today, technologically superior.
Note: This article analyses business models and market dynamics without reference to specific subjects. The opinions expressed are based on the author's direct experience as Creative Director of a communications agency active for over 20 years, and on publicly available sources. The criticism is directed at economic models, not at individual companies or professionals who operate legitimately in copyright protection, which remains a fundamental and sacrosanct principle.
In this reflection, we'll analyse how this short circuit is occurring before our eyes in the world of photography and visual content, which fundamental lessons we've forgotten from the music industry revolution, and how the same mistake is being repeated, with systemic risks for our country, in the television rights sector.
The self-destruction of the photography market
The professional photography sector is experiencing the perfect storm today. It's an existential crisis that strikes on multiple fronts, and which some copyright management models are inadvertently aggravating rather than resolving.
The devaluation of the image
Let's start from the base: the perceived value of a photograph. Until fifteen or twenty years ago, producing a quality image required high technical skills, expensive equipment and, above all, physical presence at the location of the event. The photographer was an irreplaceable witness.
Today, the democratisation of technology has made everyone a potential image producer. When a catastrophic event occurs, even before the fastest photojournalist arrives, there are already a hundred smartphones that have captured the scene from every angle, and those images are already viral on social media and even on national newspapers and television news. The exclusivity of the news image has evaporated.
Simultaneously, the "ceremonial" market, the historic financial backbone for thousands of professionals in Italy, is contracting. The ISTAT data is unequivocal: in 2023, 184,207 marriages were celebrated (-2.6% compared to 2022), whilst in 2024 the number dropped to 173,272 marriages (-5.9% compared to 2023). The first nine months of 2025 confirm this trend with a further decrease of 5.9% (source: ISTAT, press release January 2026).
New generations are changing priorities: millennials represent 70% of couples getting married (average age 36 years), whilst Gen Z has gone from 1% in 2023 to 18% in 2024, now representing 1 in 5 marriages. The average expenditure for a wedding in 2024-2025 stands at €23,781 (+8%), but 42% of couples declare that the economic situation has had a substantial impact on the budget, leading many to downsize or eliminate some items, including the traditional photography service (source: DiLei, January 2025).
The ceremony photographer faces a saturated market and a clientele that no longer perceives that service as an absolute must-have, preferring to invest those resources in experiences like a longer honeymoon, or simply in living together.
The debt collection-based model
Let's be clear from the outset: copyright is sacrosanct and must be protected. Photographers have the right to be paid for their work. The problem isn't the protection itself, but the method: when the defence of the right becomes a parallel industry based on aggressive debt collection strategies rather than on facilitating legal purchase, the model becomes counterproductive.
In this context of extreme fragility, what have some large rights holders and the legal firms they rely upon done? Instead of making access to images simpler, more fluid and more convenient to support demand, they've adopted a very rigid protection approach.
They've developed a business model based not primarily on selling value, but on monetising non-compliant use. Using automated software that scans the web 24 hours a day, these entities identify every minimal irregular use of an image, even dating back years, even on sites with negligible traffic or educational and training content without profit motives.
The system doesn't distinguish between a large e-commerce site generating millions of euros and a small educational blog without advertising. It doesn't analyse the context, doesn't evaluate good faith, doesn't consider whether the use generates an effective economic advantage or not. The algorithm detects the presence of the image. Full stop.
The next step isn't always a request for amicable regularisation, but often the sending of communications with rigorous legal tones, which outline complex procedural scenarios and request sums that may appear disproportionate relative to the actual market value of the contested use. The stated objective is the protection of the right, but the practical effect is that of creating a sense of urgency that favours immediate transaction to avoid further legal complications.
It's a model that can generate cash in the short term, feeding an ecosystem of specialised law firms. But in the medium term it represents a serious problem for the industry.
The "Scorched Earth" effect and the advent of AI
What's the consequence of this excessively rigorous protection attitude? Systemic distrust.
When I help my clients manage these situations, I always see the same pattern: after a contestation, even if it's then resolved, something changes in their approach. They become suspicious. They start seeing every image as a potential future problem rather than as a creative resource.
We ourselves, as an agency, despite having regular subscriptions to multiple stock platforms (from Adobe Stock to Envato, through to Freepik), often find ourselves navigating a sea of complex clauses, extended licences, print run or social media usage limits that change continuously.
To this is added a further complication: images present on one platform that suddenly disappear, only to reappear on other platforms with different licences. One thus finds oneself obliged to archive and manage hundreds of licences for hundreds of .jpg files, tracking provenance, download date, type of licence purchased and project use. A documentation system that requires almost more time than the creative choice itself.
If to this bureaucratic complexity is added the constant fear that one day a legal communication will arrive for a detail that escaped us, the natural reaction is flight.
The client (the agency, the company) begins to perceive traditional photography not as a resource, but as a potential legal risk.
And precisely whilst the traditional market becomes a minefield, here comes the way out: Generative Artificial Intelligence.
Tools like Midjourney, DALL-E or Firefly aren't just a technological revolution; they're a process revolution. They offer images of increasingly high quality, achievable in seconds, at negligible costs and, above all, free from the fear of past copyright.
The numbers speak clearly: a 2025 NYU-Emory study found that 90% of marketers use GenAI in their workflows and approximately 45% already use Visual GenAI for social and web content. Advertisements created entirely with AI recorded a 19% increase in performance compared to those created by human experts (source: DataiAds, 2025).
The most striking confirmation comes from RAI itself. In 2026, the Italian public broadcaster transmitted at least two advertisements created entirely with artificial intelligence: the promotional spot for Sanremo Giovani 2026, with Carlo Conti transformed into a fantasy "King", and the spot for the Concerto del Primo Maggio 2025 (sources: Tready.it, Il Foglio). If Italian State television uses AI for its own campaigns, the message to the market is crystal clear.
Internationally, Toys "R" Us presented at the Cannes Lions Festival 2024 the first advertisement almost entirely created with OpenAI's Sora (80-85% of visual content generated by AI), whilst Coca-Cola created three versions of the famous Christmas advertisement "Holidays Are Coming" for Christmas 2024 using generative AI (source: LFM SPA, Corriere della Sera).
Why would a company risk using a stock photo that could cost it a lawsuit in three years, when it can generate a bespoke image with AI, exempt from that type of risk?
The stock platforms themselves have understood this and are integrating AI into their catalogues, but not to respond to market needs or to improve user experience. They've seen an irresistible economic opportunity: to drastically reduce costs and multiply the offering infinitely.
With generative AI, every single image in the catalogue can be declined into hundreds of variants: same subject, different colours, different angles, different styles. A professional photographer who previously supplied 100 original images from a shoot can today be replaced by an algorithm that generates 10,000 variants from a single base photo. Fewer royalties to pay photographers, infinitely larger catalogue to sell to subscribers.
The paradox is complete: the rigid copyright protection model has created distrust in clients, pushing them towards AI. And now the same platforms that should defend photographers use that same technology to reduce their economic value.
The excessively protective attitude in copyright management has accelerated a technological transition that's replacing the very product it aimed to protect. The system isn't just pushing clients towards Midjourney: it's rendering the professional photographer obsolete in the mass commercial market.
The industry's short memory (Lesson from Music and Cinema)
It's fascinating, and tragic, to note how the content industry never learns from its own historical mistakes. What's happening today with images is the exact repetition, frame by frame, of what happened twenty years ago with the music industry.
Napster and the illusion of repression
Remember the late 1990s? The arrival of MP3 and the spread of broadband created an earthquake. Suddenly, music became liquid. It could be exchanged, copied and transported without the physical support of the CD.
The response of the major record labels (the famous "Big Five" of the era) and trade associations (like the RIAA in America) wasn't to adapt the business model to the new technological reality. They didn't think: "People want digital music, easy to download and perhaps detached from purchasing the entire album. Let's create a digital shop to sell it to them".
No. Their response was total war. They sued Napster, managing to shut it down. Then they sued other file-sharing software. Then, in the darkest and most desperate phase, they began suing individual users. Students, mothers, even deceased persons found themselves receiving astronomical compensation claims for having downloaded a few songs.
The result of this strategy based on fear and legal repression was a disaster across the board:
1. Piracy didn't stop, quite the opposite. Napster closed, a hundred more decentralised and difficult-to-strike alternatives were born (eMule, Kazaa, BitTorrent, The Pirate Bay). The legal war had won a battle, but lost the war.
2. The music industry's image was destroyed. They were perceived as greedy dinosaurs fighting against their own fans, even going so far as to sue students and minors. Some prominent artists began publicly distancing themselves from the majors: Radiohead in 2007 released "In Rainbows" with the "pay what you want" model, Nine Inch Nails released entire albums for free, Prince declared war on traditional contracts. The message was clear: even the creators no longer believed in the system that represented them.
3. Revenues collapsed. People didn't stop listening to music, they simply stopped buying it in the way the industry wanted to impose. Between 2000 and 2010, the global music market lost almost 50% of its value (from $38 billion to $20 billion according to IFPI).
The victory of accessibility: iTunes and Spotify
Who saved the music industry? Not the lawyers. Steve Jobs and, later, Daniel Ek saved it.
Apple with iTunes understood a fundamental truth: you can't compete with "free" using the law, you can only compete by offering a better experience. iTunes made purchasing digital music easy, secure, organised and relatively inexpensive ($0.99 per song). It was more convenient than searching for files on eMule, risking viruses and ending up with poor-quality files.
Then came Spotify, which took the concept to the extreme: access beats ownership. With a monthly subscription at the cost of a single CD, you have access to all the world's music, anywhere, instantly.
The IFPI-FIMI data proves it unequivocally. Research conducted by Similarweb for IFPI and FIMI documented a dramatic collapse in music piracy in Italy: the phenomenon fell by 35% compared to March 2018, but considering a two-year period (2017-2019), the recorded drop was over 50% (source: FIMI, 2019).
Stream ripping (downloading video and music from YouTube) fell by 41% in one year, whilst BitTorrent collapsed by 52.6% compared to the previous year. Spotify reached approximately 10 million Italian users, composed of 32% young people between 16 and 24 years old, an age bracket that in previous years constituted the backbone of illegal P2P services.
Music piracy wasn't defeated by lawsuits. It was defeated by accessibility. Spotify, Apple Music and the others made piracy inconvenient and useless for most people. They opened a new business model that today generates billions.
The same goes for cinema. Blockbuster based a significant part of its profits on penalties for late return of VHS tapes. It was a punitive model. Netflix eliminated penalties (initially with DVDs by post) and then made content accessible via streaming. Today Blockbuster is a nostalgic memory, Netflix is a global giant.
The lesson is carved in stone: if your business model is based on making your customer's life difficult or punishing them for mistakes, you'll be swept away by the first alternative that makes that life easier.
The dystopian present of TV Rights and "Fortress Italy"
If the photography sector is the example of how you lose a niche market, what's happening today in Italy with television rights, particularly those of football, is the macroscopic example of how the rigid application of protection models can risk creating systemic damage to an entire country.
The situation is known to all enthusiasts. The legal offering to watch football in Italy has over the years become increasingly fragmented, expensive and complex.
The fragmentation of the offering
The user faces a labyrinth: to watch all their team's matches, often one subscription isn't enough. The division of rights between different players (mainly DAZN and Sky) has created a paradoxical situation in which the user must subscribe to multiple services, with monthly costs that can easily exceed €50-60, to have what they once had with a single decoder.
Faced with this exponential increase in costs and complexity, the quality of service hasn't always been up to scratch (we remember streaming problems, delays, technical outages).
We therefore have the lethal combination:
- High cost
- High friction (managing multiple apps, multiple accounts)
- Low perceived service quality
The wrong response: the "Pezzotto" and repression
Faced with this inefficient market offering, part of the user base turned to illegality, the so-called "Pezzotto" (illegal IPTV). Is it justifiable? No, it's a crime. But is it understandable from an economic and behavioural point of view? Absolutely yes.
How did the system (Football League, broadcasters, legislator) react? Not by questioning how to make the legal offering more attractive. Once again, the response was the tightening of sanctions, the creation of increasingly aggressive automated blocking tools.
We've arrived at the launch of tools like "Piracy Shield", a platform that should block illegal streams in real time. The intentions are legitimate (protecting a multi-billion investment), but the execution and underlying philosophy are creating problems more serious than the original problem.
Hefty fines are threatened not only for those who broadcast and profit, but also for the end user, the fan watching the match on the sofa. An extremely rigorous climate is created, equating the viewer to a hardened criminal.
The systemic risk: isolating Italy
But the most serious aspect is the technological escalation. In the attempt to block pirate streams, increasingly stringent and rapid blocking obligations are being imposed on internet infrastructure providers (ISPs, DNS, CDN).
This rigid approach has led to worrying consequences. Global giants of web infrastructure, such as Cloudflare (which manages an enormous share of global internet traffic, guaranteeing speed and security to millions of legitimate sites), have launched very serious warnings.
Cloudflare's CEO, Matthew Prince, stated in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore (February 2026) that Cloudflare could leave Italy if the fine of over €14 million imposed by AGCOM is confirmed by the Lazio TAR (source: Il Sole 24 Ore, February 2026).
In an official post on X (8 January 2026), Prince accused Italy of wanting to "censor the Internet" with a system that "even the EU has defined as concerning", denouncing the absence of judicial oversight, due process, possibility of appeal and transparency. He wrote: "Italy insists that an obscure European media clique should be able to dictate what is and isn't allowed online. This, of course, is DISGUSTING" (source: HDBlog).
Prince listed the actions that Cloudflare is considering:
- Discontinue pro bono cybersecurity services for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics
- Discontinue free cybersecurity services for all Italian users
- Remove all servers from Italian cities
- Cancel all plans to build an Italian office or make investments in the country
Do we realise the seriousness? To protect the television rights of a football league (managed with a questionable sales model), we risk digitally isolating Italy, potentially damaging all businesses that rely on those infrastructural services to work online.
It's the triumph of the punitive model that devours itself. Rather than admit that the commercial offering is inadequate, there's willingness to militarise the network and risk the country's technological isolation.
The response to the "Pezzotto" isn't Piracy Shield. The response is a single, simple, reliable legal offering at an accessible cost. One subscription for the entire championship, with the possibility of customised packages for those who only want to follow their own team at a reduced price.
Do you earn less on the single subscription? Yes. But you sell millions more, you eliminate piracy through obsolescence and above all you don't treat your customers as criminals.
Why accessibility always wins: Theoretical framework
The common thread that connects those working with creative content who receive legal notices, users downloading music on Napster and fans seeking illegal streaming is the same: the search for the path of least resistance.
The market is like water. It flows where it finds fewer obstacles. If the legal offering is a dam made of high costs, complex bureaucracy, excessive legal rigour and inadequate service, the water will find another path. Whether it's piracy or, as in the case of visual creativity, Artificial Intelligence.
We can define four fundamental principles:
1. Piracy is a symptom, not a cause
When a piracy phenomenon reaches mass dimensions, it's not a collective moral problem. It's a market signal indicating a problem in the offering. If millions of people seek illegal alternatives, it means the legal offering doesn't satisfy a real need in terms of accessibility, price or convenience.
2. Repression shifts the problem, doesn't resolve it
Closing a single pirate service (Napster, Megaupload, etc.) doesn't eliminate the underlying demand. It only generates more decentralised alternatives that are difficult to control. It's like squeezing a balloon: the volume remains the same, only the shape changes.
3. Accessibility transforms "pirates" into paying customers
The Spotify case demonstrates it: over 80% of active streaming users today were former users of illegal P2P services. They weren't converted by lawsuits, but by an offering so convenient and affordable as to make the effort of seeking illegal alternatives useless.
4. Innovation doesn't stop in court
You can win a case against a specific technology (like Napster), but you can't stop the need that technology satisfied. Users wanted digital music, instant, customisable. You could block Napster, but you couldn't block that desire. The water found another path.
"Fear Marketing", the idea that you can defend positions of advantage through the tightening of sanctions and the systematic search for violations to monetise, is a failing model. It failed with music, it failed with cinema, and it's failing today with images and sport.
What to do today (SME Toolkit)
For those of us working in marketing and communications, the lesson is clear. We can't build strategies based on assets that become potential legal risks. But how does one concretely navigate this scenario?
When my client asked me for help managing that legal notice, the first thing we did together was build a system to prevent similar situations in future. This toolkit is born from that experience and from those of dozens of other clients who experienced analogous situations.
1. Paid stock imagery: when it makes sense
✅ Use stock subscriptions when:
- You need professional high-resolution images for high-profile client projects
- You work in regulated sectors where complete traceability is needed (pharmaceutical, finance)
- You have adequate budget AND an efficient licence management system
- The required images have very specific requirements (people, places, real events)
⚠️ Life-saving documentation:
This is what I recommended to my client and what we rigorously apply at the agency:
- Screenshot of the download page with date and visible licence (the downloaded file alone isn't sufficient)
- Save licence PDFs in a dedicated folder per project
- Use an Excel spreadsheet to track: date, platform, image ID, project used, licence type, who downloaded
- Keep everything for at least 5-7 years (many challenges arrive years later)
- Name files intelligently:
2025-11-18_envato_ID123456_standard-licence_clientX-blog.jpg
💰 Real cost/benefit:
- Envato Elements: ~€16/month (unlimited, but complex licence)
- Adobe Stock: 10 images/month ~€30 (clearer, less choice)
- Shutterstock: from €29/month for 10 images
- Hidden cost: licence verification time = 10-15 mins/image = €25-40 labour cost
- Potential cost: one challenge = €2,000-5,000 + legal time
2. Generative AI: opportunities and limits
✅ Advantages:
- Negligible costs (Midjourney ~€10/month, DALL-E pay-per-use)
- Zero past copyright risk
- Total customisation
- Iteration speed
⚠️ Current limits:
- Difficulty with text in images (often illegible)
- Hands, feet and complex anatomy still problematic
- Brands and logos not reproducible (problem for realistic mockups)
- Variable quality: prompt engineering skill required
- Some platforms require disclosure of AI use
🎯 When to prefer AI:
- Atmospheric and contextual images
- Illustrations and concept art
- Scenarios impossible to photograph
- Internal or low-budget projects
- When you have time to iterate on the prompt
- When you want to sleep peacefully at night
⚖️ Legal note: Images generated by AI are generally commercially usable (depends on the tool), but:
- Check the Terms of Service of the specific tool
- Some platforms require disclosure of AI use
- Copyright on AI images is still a grey area in many jurisdictions
- But no one will send you a legal notice in two years
3. Free stock (Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay)
✅ Advantages:
- Zero costs
- Very permissive licences (commercial use generally OK)
- Excellent photographic quality
- Active community
⚠️ Underestimated risks:
- Not everything is truly free: some photographers upload images they don't own the rights to
- Brand/people recognisability: an Unsplash photo may contain a logo or identifiable person
- Overexposure: the most popular images are used everywhere (zero differentiation)
- No legal guarantee: if someone challenges your use, you're on your own
✅ Best practices:
- Use for internal projects, blogs, low-traffic social media
- Avoid for high-visibility paid campaigns
- Always verify the photographer's profile (is it credible? Does it have a coherent portfolio?)
- If possible, contact the photographer for written release for important projects
- Screenshot the download page with CC0 licence or similar visible
4. Own production: when it's worth investing
💰 Break-even analysis: A professional photography service costs on average €300-1,200 (half day, 50-100 usable photos).
Worth it when:
- You need at least 20-30 unique images for a project
- You want to build a reusable proprietary library
- You need images very specific to your brand/product
- The project ROI justifies the investment (campaign, rebranding, new website)
- You want absolute certainty of owning the rights
Low-cost in-house:
- Modern smartphones (iPhone 14+, Samsung S23+) produce sufficient quality for web and social
- Minimum investment: tripod (€30), ring light (€50), neutral backdrop (€40)
- Total: ~€120 = 7 months of Envato, but images 100% yours forever
- The psychological advantage is enormous: zero anxiety, total creative freedom
5. Operational checklist: verify before use
Before using ANY image, verify:
- Certain source (official platform, not Google Images)
- Licence adequate for use (commercial? Modifiable? Print run? Social use?)
- Screenshot saved with date visible in browser bar
- Image metadata preserved (often contains copyright info)
- If free stock: verify uploader credibility
- If AI: verify Terms of Service for commercial use
- If client: have them sign release confirming ownership of supplied images
- Documentation archived for at least 5-7 years
6. If you receive a legal notice: what to do (and what NOT to do)
When my client forwarded me that email, here's what we did:
❌ DON'T do:
- Don't pay immediately out of fear (often the intimidating tone is strategy)
- Don't ignore the communication (can worsen your position)
- Don't respond emotionally or aggressively
- Don't delete the image from the site before documenting everything
- Don't speak by phone with the other party without a solicitor
✅ DO immediately:
- Document everything
- Screenshot of the received email
- Find and save all documents relating to the image download
- Screenshot of the current page where the image is published
- History of access to the stock platform (if available)
- Verify legitimacy
- Who claims the right? Are they really the holder or an authorised representative?
- Is the contested image actually protected by copyright?
- Is the request reasonable relative to the actual damage?
- Consult a solicitor specialising in intellectual property
- Many offer initial consultation free or at low cost
- NOT a generalist solicitor: you need an IP specialist
- Ask for references from trade associations (ADCI, UNA, etc.)
- Assess your position
- Did you really download the image properly?
- Did the purchased licence cover that specific use?
- Are there mitigating factors (good faith, platform error, etc.)?
- Always respond in writing
- Never by phone
- Always through legal counsel if the amount exceeds €1,000
- Professional tone, never emotional or accusatory
- Request specific details about the contested violation
💡 Practical advice: In my client's case, after analysing the documentation with the solicitor, it emerged that the stock platform had retroactively modified the licence terms. The challenge was resolved with a payment much lower than that initially requested. But without accurate documentation, it would have been impossible to demonstrate this.
Conclusion: Embrace accessibility or perish
"Fear Marketing", the idea that you can defend positions of advantage through the tightening of sanctions and the systematic search for violations to monetise, is a failing model. It has been for music, it has been for cinema, and it's becoming so for photography and television rights.
For those of us working in marketing and communications, the lesson is clear. We can't build strategies based on assets that become potential legal risks. And, more generally, we must understand that the future belongs to those who lower entry barriers, not to those who raise them.
When I help my clients navigate these waters, the question I always ask is: "Is this resource making your life easier or more complicated?" If the answer is "more complicated", then it's time to seek alternatives.
The creative industry must choose: it can continue spending energy and resources to legally pursue the changing world, entrenching itself in an increasingly empty fortress, or it can accept the challenge of innovation, rethink its business models and return to offering value that people are happy to pay for, not obliged to through fear.
AI is already here, and doesn't need solicitors to prosper. It only needs the old world to continue getting its strategy wrong. And at the moment, the old world seems very committed to obliging it.
Markets evolve towards accessibility, not towards repression. Those who understand this survive (Spotify, Netflix). Those who insist on the old model die (Blockbuster, record shops). For photographers, agencies and rights holders: either you rethink the model, or you accelerate the end.
The fortress that was meant to protect the market has become its prison. And the walls that were meant to keep out the pirates are only keeping in the last paying customers, who look with increasing interest at the alternatives appearing from outside.
The question is no longer "how do we protect the old model", but "how do we build the new one before someone else does it for us".
📦 Summary Box: The 3 Laws of the Digital Market (that the industry pretends not to know)
1. Friction is the enemy
If to buy your legal product I must make more effort (or spend unreasonable sums) compared to the illegal or substitute alternative (AI), you'll lose. Always. The market flows towards the path of least resistance, not towards the most legally correct one.
2. Access beats ownership (and threat)
Users prefer to pay for convenient and unlimited access (Spotify/Netflix model) rather than be pursued for every single use. Convenience beats ownership, and peace of mind beats fear.
3. Innovation doesn't stop in court
You can win a case against a technology (like Napster), but you can't stop the need that technology satisfied. Users will always find another path. Water doesn't stop, it only changes course.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is meant by “fear marketing” in the visual content sector?
It is an economic and legal model in which copyright protection is monetised through automated scanning systems and aggressive compensation claims, rather than by facilitating legitimate purchasing. This approach creates a climate of widespread anxiety among businesses, which begin to perceive traditional imagery as a constant bureaucratic risk.
What is the difference in terms of legal risk between stock images and AI-generated images?
Stock images are tied to complex contracts whose terms may change over time, exposing users to the risk of retrospective disputes over minor administrative details. Images created through generative artificial intelligence originate directly from algorithmic processes and do not inherit previous copyright claims, effectively eliminating this specific type of legal threat.
How much does it cost to stay compliant with photographic licensing requirements?
A subscription to traditional stock platforms costs between €15 and €40 per month, to which must be added the hidden cost of the time required to catalogue and verify every individual licence. By contrast, organising an in-house production setup requires a minimal initial investment of around €120 for basic smartphone equipment, permanently eliminating the risk of future legal notices.
Are AI-generated images suitable for mobile devices?
Yes, the files exported by the main visual generation tools are perfectly optimised in terms of file size and resolution for smartphone viewing. Furthermore, the flexible nature of the technology allows image proportions to be instantly adjusted for the vertical formats typical of mobile channels without being subjected to forced cropping.
When is it not advisable to use generative AI for a brand’s visual content?
The use of AI is not recommended when there is a strict need to display real products in precise detail, commercial mock-ups containing registered logos or complex textual elements integrated within the image. In these specific scenarios, where geometric accuracy and visual authenticity are essential, traditional photographic production remains irreplaceable.
Which tools are used to manage company images securely?
To create risk-free content, advanced generation platforms such as Midjourney, DALL·E or Adobe Firefly are commonly used. If, instead, traditional stock catalogues are preferred, the essential management tool is an internal register in Excel or Notion used to map expiry dates, usage rights and documentary screenshots of downloads, which should be retained for at least 5–7 years.
About the author
By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://insightadv.it/
Comments