If you are publishing the image on a website, or billboard, or book cover, or any other use, you are ultimately liable for any infringement. If you licensed the

If you are publishing the image on a website, or billboard, or book cover, or any other use, you are ultimately liable for any infringement. If you licensed the image from a traditional stock photo service, they have certain practices that ensure the artist does have the rights to license the image to you, and they make some limited guarantees to you to that end. If the images were sold to you without permission of the original artist, and you were successfully sued it is possible you could pursue the stock image company for these damages. The CC licenses, and sites like Flickr are not giving you any guarantee or warranting their use, and they expressly disclaim any liability.