Copyright and takedown

Uploading a photograph to FRAME transfers nothing. You made it, you own it, and you can license it to whoever you like on whatever terms you like, including terms FRAME knows nothing about.

Every photograph is shown with its photographer’s name and a link to their profile, and the footer of every page says that FRAME licenses nothing on anyone’s behalf. That is not decoration: it is the whole arrangement.

Publishing a photograph grants FRAME a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence, for as long as the photograph is on FRAME, to do four things and no more:

• store the file you uploaded;
• generate the smaller sizes needed to show it without sending a full-resolution original to every visitor;
• display it on FRAME’s own pages — the galleries, the map, a location page, a profile, a collection — with your credit;
• feature it in FRAME’s own editorial promotion of FRAME, such as an editor’s pick or a post about a photograph that is on the site, again with your credit.

That licence does not include sublicensing your work to a third party, selling it, offering it as stock, printing it for sale, using it in paid advertising, or using it to train a machine-learning model. None of those are covered, and none of them will be added by amending this page quietly.

Removing the photograph ends the licence. Already-generated sizes are deleted with it; anything already printed on paper obviously cannot be recalled, which is why the promotional use above is deliberately narrow.

Any use beyond the four above is a separate agreement between you and whoever wants it. That includes advertising, merchandise, editorial use by a publication, print sales and licensing to a brand, whether the request reaches you through FRAME or not.

Where someone contacts FRAME wanting to license a photograph, they are given the photographer’s profile and nothing else. FRAME does not negotiate on your behalf, does not take a cut, and does not pass on your email address without asking you first.

If a photograph on FRAME is yours and was published by somebody else, report it with the reason This photograph is not the uploader’s work or Copyright infringement, and include the following. A complaint missing any of it cannot be acted on, and will be returned saying which part is missing.

• The address of the photograph on FRAME.
• Identification of the work you say it infringes: a link to where you published it, or a copy, or enough description to identify it unambiguously.
• Your relationship to that work — the photographer, the rights holder, or an agent.
• Your name and an address we can reply to.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use on FRAME is not authorised.
• A statement that what you have said is accurate.

What happens next, and roughly when:

• Within two working days the complaint is acknowledged and read by a moderator.
• Where the claim is on its face valid, the photograph is hidden while it is examined. Hiding it is a precaution, not a finding: it means nobody is harmed further while the question is open.
• Within five working days the uploader is told what has been claimed, and by whom to the extent they need in order to answer it. They have ten working days to respond.
• A decision is recorded with a reason and both sides are told what it was. If the claim is upheld the photograph stays down. If it is not, the photograph comes back and the report is closed as dismissed.

Those timings are the intent of a project with a small moderation team, not a contractual guarantee, and they will be revised here if they turn out to be unrealistic rather than quietly missed.

You can answer a claim. A counter-notice needs the address of the photograph, an explanation of why you have the right to publish it, your name and a contact address, and a statement that what you have said is accurate.

Where the answer is credible the photograph is restored and the complainant is told, so that they can take the matter further through a court if they still believe they are right. FRAME is not in a position to decide who owns a photograph: where two accounts both claim the same work and neither will move, the photograph stays down until they settle it between themselves or somebody with the authority to decide does.

Filing a claim or a counter-notice you know to be false is grounds for closing the account, and in several jurisdictions is an offence in its own right.

Upheld claims are counted against the account they were upheld against.

• A first upheld claim: the photograph is removed and the member is told why.
• A second: uploading is suspended while the account is reviewed, and every other photograph on it is checked.
• A third: the account is closed.

Claims that were withdrawn, dismissed or answered successfully are not counted. Deleting a photograph and uploading it again does not reset the count, and neither does opening a second account — an account opened to continue after a closure is closed as well.

FRAME computes a perceptual fingerprint of each upload and shows a moderator when a new photograph closely resembles one already on the site. That check is useful and it is also close to blind: it cannot tell which of two uploads was made first, cannot tell a crop from a copy, and cannot tell a photographer re-uploading their own work from somebody taking it.

So it never removes anything by itself. It puts a pair in front of a person, who then has to do the actual work of establishing who made the photograph. The same is true of the other automated signals: a file with no EXIF is not evidence of theft, because exporting software strips EXIF as a matter of routine, and a burst of uploads is not evidence of anything except enthusiasm.

Those signals are shown in the moderation queue labelled as signals, with their severity, precisely so that nobody mistakes one for a conclusion. The community guidelines describe the rest of what moderators look at.