Many photographers — including myself— have had their work infringed upon and republished without permission or attribution. Often, a photograph is shared by someone who unknowingly infringes on the work. It’s a matter of patiently educating them on basic copyrights without burning a bridge. These are difficult conversations to have, especially when so much of our work as freelancers depends on word of mouth and being “likeable.” Though it is obvious that everyone has bills to pay, it is not immediately obvious to the general public how photographers make their money. And while the common counter-argument is that artists can receive “exposure” by having their work featured somewhere, every artist will tell you they cannot pay their bills through exposure.

In April, a New York court ruled that by publishing to Instagram, a photographer gave up her exclusive licensing rights to her photo. The photographer in this case, Stephanie Sinclair, has had work appear in publications such as New York Times Magazine and National Geographic.

Mashable — the website that published Sinclair’s photograph without her consent — had originally offered her US$50 to license her photograph of a mother and a child in Guatemala on its website in 2016, which she declined. A fee like this is well below industry standard. Licensing at Getty Images, for example, starts at $150 per image or US$211 for Offset, a subsidiary of Shutterstock. However, most of the images in these catalogues are royalty-free and not usually from a body of work that is the pinnacle of the photographers’ careers. For an artist’s best work, an editorial site like Mashable, with an average of 17 million page views per month, the suggested rate is $600-$1,340 according to Getty’s image licensing calculator.

Like many in the creative fields, photographers rely in part on licensing fees to support their livelihoods. In recent years, with declining editorial budgets for assignments and the steady elimination of staff positions in publications and wires, editorial photographers such as Sinclair have had to pivot and find supplementary income streams elsewhere. This could include leading workshops, leading photo tours, creating corporate and commercial work, licensing stock photography, selling prints and selling editing presets. For many photographers, incomes will be affected without licensing as a revenue stream. And if photographers are unable to support themselves from their work, how can they continue to create work that both informs and entertains, and inspires and educates?

Though it has been common (but problematic) for photos to be reposted online without proper attribution or compensation for many years now, this ruling sets a dangerous precedent for photographers worldwide who rely on selling their work to sustain themselves. The ruling establishes that all content posted on the popular social media site can theoretically be republished by embedding onto another site without compensation to the original creator.

A number of professional photography associations such as the National Press Photographers Association (U.S.), Professional Photographers of America, American Society of Media Photographers, North American Nature Photography Association and American Photographic Artists have lobbied Instagram to change its rules. It has also prompted photographers to change their account settings to private.

Jointly, the NPPA, ASMP, PPA, APA, NANPA and the Graphic Artists Guild have released a statement and are encouraging photographers to change their settings to private and update their Instagram bios, explaining why they have changed their settings to private .

“We recommend that you include a brief statement to your ‘bio’ that explains why. Your bio is limited to 150 characters, but our recommended language below is only 85 characters: Account is private to block embedding of my images. Click ‘follow’ to request access,” it reads.

They have also created a downloadable “square”that photographers can use to explain why the settings are private.