Can I upload content someone else created?

When you joined Stocksy, you agreed to the Member Agreements (Member Agreement & Supply Agreement). Here are the important bits: 

The content you upload must be your original creation.

“Your” could mean you as an individual artist or your business. “Original creation” means something you created yourself or content you directed the creation of from the start, such as hiring someone to operate a second camera on a session you planned or asking your spouse to press the shutter on a composition you set up.

You must wholly own all rights to any content you upload.

If you are a solo artist creating content yourself, you are fully compliant with the requirement. 

If you work as a team or hire contractors like camera operators, you will need to determine the legal requirements for your location so that copyright is assigned validly and irrevocably to your Stocksy account owner. 

You can establish rights through legal agreements, such as a work-for-hire agreement in the United States or similar options by different names in other locations. Stocksy’s legal team cannot act as your lawyer, so we can’t draft or review your legal agreements. However, Stocksy may request proof of such agreements or contracts. 

We recommend seeking counsel from local experts–you’re opening yourself to copyright infringement risks if your legal contracts are not sound. 

We require irrevocable copyright.

We tell our clients that there will be no copyright claims against their purchased licenses. Therefore, any copyright assignment must be for all time and cannot be revoked or changed later.

We can’t accept content you acquired in other ways, such as buying content to upload to Stocksy, distributing others’ work under a royalty-sharing agreement, or having other artists transfer their copyright to you so you can upload their work to your account.

We also can’t transfer content between accounts. As soon as an account uploads content to Stocksy, they promise to Stocksy that they wholly and irrevocably own the copyright. We also can’t accept the same content if uploaded later under another copyright owner’s name.

Uploading content another artist created violates membership terms and may jeopardize your continued membership at Stocksy. We want you to succeed and stay members, so if you have questions or concerns about the content you upload, please reach out, and we can help you determine what protections and documents you should have in place.