Those who focus on the model and whether she was posing in lingerie or not, are missing the point totally.
There is a bigger issue here.
The thing in question here is whether a photographer can be held responsible for what an end user is doing with his/her photos.
If the end user is breaching a TOS, how the h*ll can the photographer be responsible.
If you think that this only concerns photographers who shoots lingerie you are way off.
This concerns everyone who shoots people for stock.
Regular portraits of "regular" girls, grandmothers and even kids are being misused everyday and if the model should win this case, this industry will have to change drastically on many levels.

Om du �r bosatt i Sverige �r du obegr�nsat skattskyldig i Sverige. Du redovisar alla dina int�kter till Skatteverket i Sverige precis som vanligt och skattar p� dem i Sverige. D�remot �r det ingen moms p� int�kter utanf�r EU. De formul�r som du fyller i hos vissa agenturer i USA g�r s� att du inte ska dubbelbeskattas.

I actually replied to depositphotos answer and pointed out that paragraph and ask them if they were 100% sure. It seemed strange to me and wanted to make sure  it wasnt a standard reply and that they had fully understood my question.

I got a reply back that they were 100% sure. They did not consider erotica books pornography.

So there you go. There are many things to consider when choosing who to work with. Commissions is just one part...

I am glad that some agencies were really clear that they did not allow such use. Some even highlighted the "YOU CAN NEVER" part. Envato  said that a written permission from the photographer to the buyer in such cases were needed.

Written erotic fiction isn't the same as a visual porn magazine or website, which is why many agencies don't see erotica as porn.

On author forums and websites, I've seen agency responses reported as basically, "don't make it look like the model on the cover is anything but an illustrative image." I guess it would help authors if they put a disclaimer to that effect. However, most people have common sense and know the model on the book cover isn't actually being taken by dinosaurs for sexytimes:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/10/qa-the-women-who-write-dinosaur-erotica.html

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/10-real-book-covers-from-dinosaur-on-human-sex-novels/

These books were all over the American news a few months ago. Notice how these are just swimsuit shots. I did warn in a thread months ago that authors are now choosing less raunchy photos so their books will show up in basic search results. (Raunchy book covers will only show up in a specific kindle search.) So, yeah a model posing for a business or glam shot might show up on dino porn. Photographers need to perhaps hire models who understand this.

And photographers, please don't assume a picture on Amazon is automatically in violation of a license agreement, and then go straight to Amazon claiming copyright violation. I've seen many reports of this on author forums, and frankly, I don't think the practice is ethical.

In the cases I've seen, Amazon assumes the copyright claim means the picture was stolen (this is the unethical part because the photographer is calming something that isn't true), and takes it down. The author then has to prove the picture was indeed licensed, losing income and book rank in the process. Once Amazon gets proof that a license was purchased, it puts the book back. The most a photographer can gain from this is that maybe the author will change the cover anyway (which I have seen).

If you see an image use you don't like, do the honest thing, and find out which agency the image was bought from, and then report it to that agency.  As we've seen in this thread, different agencies have different ideas about what is allowed. Don't assume.

The problem is that there isn't a publisher to contact. Often the author is the publisher and it is impossible to reach him/her. No contact info and often a pseudonym. Amazon is the only place that has the contact info. You cannot find out where the image has been licensed unless you contact Amazon. Misuse of an image is a kind of copyright infringement, but you should of course explain the situation and not claim that the image is stolen.


My question to the agencies were simple. "Can i purhase an image and put it on a cover of a e-book in the erotica genre?
I did not say porn, i only asked about erotica. The answer was crystal clear from most of the agencies. No, that is not allowed. Depositphotos and Alamy were the only agencies that allowed it.

Alamy doesn't agree that erotica is pornography and recommend uploading as RM and set "sensitive use" as restriction for future uploads if there is a concern.

I don't know if you have noticed, but the e-book industry have exploded the last year or so. Selfpublished authors are growing in numbers and the "erotica" genre is huge. Just on Amazon there are over 150 000 titles in that genre and that is just  one of the venues where the books are sold. Many of these self published authors are using micro stock photos on their covers. I have come across some pretty disturbing examples on how images of mine are being used on covers lately. And it is not just the "romance with an erotic twist" either, it is pretty hardcore stuff. Titles like "big c*cks in every h*ole" type of thing, and it is not only images of models in lingerie for example, some are just portraits of fully dressed normal girls where the author have put in hardcore titles. To me this is a clear violation of the license terms where it usually says that images cannot be used in pornographic or defamatory uses.

After been contacting a few authors about this I got the feeling that some of them where convinced that this would be an ok usage. I got curious and
sent an e-mail to all micro stock agencies asking about their view about this. I did not say that I was a contributor. I wanted to hear what they would say to an image buyer. I just asked if it would be ok to use a stock photo from their agency on an erotica book.

Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, Envato, Canstockphoto and 123rf all replied that this was not an allowed usage according to their license terms.

Depositphotos, however said that it was totally ok with them, that they did not consider erotica books to be pornography.

So you might want to reconsider putting RF people images for sale on Depositphotos�.

Edit: After being in contact with Depositphotos again, we have received a different response. After reviewing some examples of covers that we sent them, the management/CEO has informed us that this is not an approved use according to their license terms. Photos from Depositphotos can not be used on erotica.
I am glad that all micro stock agencies share this view, they just need to be better informing the buyers about this now.