Release Indemnification & Hold Harmless Agreement: Fill & Download for Free

It's a spectrum of safety. Compared to most free photo sites, Unsplash is among the most safe. Microstock stock photo agencies are safer, and so-called traditional stock photo libraries are safer still.Yes, it's possible someone uploads a stolen photo to Unsplash. Just as it's possible they upload a photo without a proper model release or property release. Or a forged release.Indemnification is the key concept here. Unsplash provides none, as you can read in their legals. Most good microstock agencies provide around $10k. Traditional agencies even more. The more a company backs the legal safety of their images with indemnification, the safer they are.You can evaluate risk based on your intended usage. Risk has two parts: likelihood and impact. The likelihood of legal issues is higher with the lesser indemnification amounts. The impact increases the more you earn with your usage. Cases where small-time blogs use a stolen images are usually settled by removing the image but without payment. When a major publication misuses an image it's millions in damages.So if you're using images for something small and inconsequential, free images will be fine. But if you're doing something serious, you need to spend some money to cover yourself.Big companies very rarely use free images for this reason. The legal departments require certain indemnification in order to approve a supplier.Unsplash is a great product. If your intended usage is in line with their indemnification, definitely take advantage of their service.

Many places that provide physical activity as a service, such as trampoline parks, indoor rock climbing gyms, skating rinks, and others actually have some pretty shady fine print if you actually bother to read and the understand the liability release forms you’re signing in order to enjoy the service.Of course, there is text in those agreements that states that you understand that there is an inherent risk to participating, and the service provider is not liable for injury you sustain due to misuse of equipment, attempting maneuvers that are beyond your skill level, or the improper activity of other patrons. Those are reasonable.There is often also additional text that states that you absolve the service provider of liability for injure that you sustain as a result of happenstance, such as a piece of equipment malfunctioning or breaking. This is starting to get hazy, but I suppose there is still a case to be made that equipment does wear out, and catastrophic failure could feasibly be chalked up to very unfortunate timing.But if you look closely enough, you can even find fine print that states that you absolve the service provider of injury that you sustain due to negligence. Indeed, some places are getting you to sign waivers that basically state that they will flip you the bird when you are injured by equipment that is rusted or has other obvious signs of degradation or another customer whose dangerous activity has been known to staff but staff has not asked that person to leave.Here is a waiver for a popular trampoline park called Quantum Leap. The dirty print in question is contained in the sections titled “Release of Liability” and “Indemnification”.

Note: I used to work for Getty but I didn’t and don’t represent the company. Views are mine.Although Getty Images is known as the highest quality stock photography agency, the main reasons Getty images are so expensive are exclusivity, releases, and indemnification.ExclusivityGetty often has exclusive access to photographs. When Getty is the official photographer or distributor for an event (such as the Clooney wedding), they are the only legal source for those images. You might be willing to right-click save-as to share a photo of George Clooney on facebook, but no sane media company would even consider it.Among Getty’s library are many archival photos. Iconic photographs of sports stars like Muhammad Ali, scientists like Albert Einstein, celebrities across time from Marilyn Monroe to Miley Cyrus. Getty owns the rights to a surprising number of famous images.Getty also facilitates total buyouts of images, meaning that instead of purchasing a non-exclusive license to use the image a customer would purchase exclusive rights to use the image. Sometimes the exclusive license is for a certain time period or formats (e.g. to ensure your ad campaign is unique), and sometimes the buyout is permanent (e.g. to ensure your brand is unique). Many of the absolute best or most exclusive images are only available this way, and companies will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars.ReleasesPeople often ask me if their photos are good enough to sell. I ask them if they’re willing to sell photos of their families. Basically, there are a zillion amazing photos of sunsets on the beach, but there are far fewer amazing photos of sunsets on the beach with a lot of people available for sale. That’s because you need a signed model release from every single person in the photo if you want to use the photo commercially. And, well, models don’t work for free. People laugh at stock photos of corporate boardrooms or huge crowds of smiling people, but those can be very expensive to shoot!Is the photo at someone’s property? Then you may also need the owner’s property release, especially if it’s a recognizable or famous location.This is where costs start to add up.IndemnificationIndemnities are insurance: when you insure something, you indemnify it for a dollar value. When you license an image from Getty, it comes with quite a bit of indemnification. This is basically Getty’s way of saying that just in case your use of the photo results in a lawsuit, you are covered for legal costs and damages up to the amount of the indemnification.This might seem like a weird thing for Getty to offer / customers to value, but imagine if an unscrupulous photographer forged the model releases for an image you used in a regional ad campaign where those people happen to live, and they sue you.All that said, there are often less expensive options available depending on the type of image you want and how you want to use it.