In your other comment (too deeply nested for me to reply to) you mitigate their actions with the quotation: > If we are wrong and you do have a valid license

In your other comment (too deeply nested for me to reply to) you mitigate their actions with the quotation: > If we are wrong and you do have a valid license The crux of the matter is that this sentence does not make it clear that a licence may not be needed at all. In fact it seems to re-enforce the idea that you definitely do need a licence. The appropriate sentence that they could have used instead is more like "if we are wrong and do not actually own the copyright", which is materially different from what they said. Of course, aside from that being a totally different meaning and implication, as others have said it is 100% Getty's responsibility to figure out what they do not own the copyright to.