In 2021, Bay Area–based home stager Coco Silver received a cease-and-desist letter for doing something that people in the design industry do every day: posting to Instagram. Claiming copyright infringement , the letter pointed to photos from a real estate shoot that Silver had put up on the social platform, as well as on her company’s website. In addition to demanding she pull the offending images down, the note insisted on a sizable payment.

Silver was shocked. She’d asked for permission from the photography agency she had worked with on the shoot, and credited them in her posts—the same as she’d done for countless other photo shoots . The catch? These photos didn’t belong to the agency (or the real estate agent handling the listing or the homeowner), but rather to the individual pho

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