Image Commercial-Use Guarantee

The Guarantee

Where Crawl Compass places an image on a client's website or delivers an image to a client, that image is licensed for the client's commercial use and is supported by a license record. Every image used is obtained from one of three sources:

• Licensed stock, purchased under a valid commercial license from a reputable library;
• Original work, photographed, designed, or illustrated for the client, or commissioned on the client's behalf; or
• Public-domain or Creative Commons work, used only where the license genuinely permits commercial use, and only where every condition (such as attribution) is met.

Crawl Compass does not use images obtained from general web searches, editorial-only images in advertising or marketing, or unlicensed stock.

What Commercial Use Means

"Commercial use" is the use of an image to promote or operate a business: on a website, in advertising, in social media, in print materials, or anywhere it supports a product or service. It is the use most businesses require, and it is the use for which "free" images are most often not cleared.

Locating an image online does not confer the right to use it. An image obtained from an image search, a competitor's website, or a third-party blog remains the property of its owner. Using it commercially without a license constitutes copyright infringement, regardless of intent and regardless of whether a previous web designer placed it. As the end user, the business bears the liability. Stock libraries, photographers, and agencies such as Getty Images routinely issue copyright demands to businesses for images used without a license. Avoiding that exposure is the purpose of this guarantee.

Licensing Terms

A small number of terms determine what may and may not be done with a licensed image. They are defined here:

• Royalty-free (RF). The image is licensed for a single fee and may then be used as often as required within the license terms. "Royalty-free" means no recurring fee; it does not mean free of charge. This is the license most websites use.
• Rights-managed (RM). The image is licensed for a specified use, defined by place, time, and territory. It is more expensive and more restrictive, and is used where tighter control or exclusivity is required.
• Attribution (CC-BY). Certain Creative Commons images may be used commercially only if the creator is credited as the license requires. Omitting the credit breaches the license. CC0 (public-domain) images require no credit.
• Editorial use only. An image cleared for news and commentary but not for advertising or marketing. Editorial images often contain recognizable people, brands, or places for which no release is held, which is why they may not be used to promote a product or service.
• Model or property release. A signed permission from a recognizable person (a model release) or a property owner (a property release) authorizing commercial use of their likeness or property. Commercial images of identifiable people, branded products, or distinctive buildings require one. Crawl Compass ensures that the relevant release is in place before such an image is used.
• Public domain. Work whose copyright has expired or been waived, free for any use, including commercial use, without permission.

How We Source Images

Crawl Compass sources images from controlled sources and retains the supporting records:

• Licensed stock from reputable libraries. Where stock is appropriate, it is purchased under a commercial license covering the client's use, from an established, reputable library, not from an unverified "free download" source.
• Original and commissioned work. Photography, graphics, and illustration produced for the client. This is the most secure source, as it does not rely on a third party's license. Where a photographer or illustrator is commissioned, the agreement assigns or licenses the work for the client's commercial use, and any required model or property releases are obtained.
• Public-domain or correctly attributed Creative Commons work. Used only where the license genuinely permits commercial use, and only where every condition is met (attribution where required, and no non-commercial-only or no-derivatives restriction).
• License records. For each sourced image, Crawl Compass retains the license, the source, and any release, so that the supporting record is available if required.

Your Rights and the Limits of a License

A license confers the right to use an image. It does not transfer ownership of the image, and that distinction defines the limits set out below. A standard commercial license permits use of the image across a website, advertising, social media, and marketing. A standard license generally does not permit:

• Resale of the image itself. The image may be used within the client's own materials. It may not be sold, sublicensed, or distributed as a standalone product. That requires a different license, which is rarely what a business needs.
• Use within a logo or trademark. A logo is intended to be owned and registered, and a standard stock license does not confer the exclusive ownership a trademark requires. An image intended for a logo should be original work produced for the client. Crawl Compass will identify this where it arises.
• Very high-volume print runs. Standard licenses often limit the number of physical reproductions (a common limit is 500,000). Most websites do not approach this limit; a large print campaign may require an extended license. Crawl Compass will identify this in advance where relevant.

Where a client supplies its own images, the client is responsible for the licensing of those images. Crawl Compass will use them. Where Crawl Compass identifies a likely rights problem in a supplied image (for example, a visible stock watermark, a recognizable public figure, or a competitor's photograph), it will raise the issue rather than publish the image.

AI-Generated Images

The legal position on AI-generated images is unsettled, and Crawl Compass treats it accordingly. As of early 2026, the U.S. Copyright Office has taken the position that an image generated purely by AI from prompts alone generally cannot be copyrighted, because copyright requires human authorship. Human-edited or human-arranged AI work may sometimes qualify, but the boundary is still being defined, and the terms of the AI tools themselves vary as to permitted use of the output.

Accordingly, when Crawl Compass uses AI-generated visuals, it discloses this to the client and treats the ownership question as open rather than settled. For any image a client needs to own or defend clearly, original or properly licensed work remains the more secure option, and that is what Crawl Compass will recommend.

Remedy

If an image sourced by Crawl Compass is found to be improperly licensed:

• Crawl Compass replaces it promptly with a properly licensed or original image;
• Crawl Compass resolves the licensing at its own cost; and
• Crawl Compass informs the client of what occurred and what was changed.

This is the full extent of the remedy: Crawl Compass corrects the issue at its own cost. Crawl Compass does not undertake to cover other costs or third-party claims, which keeps the scope of this guarantee defined.