> Assuming appropriate licensing For such customers the mere fact it is free would make the licensing questionable. Consider a service like unsplash: what vet

> Assuming appropriate licensing For such customers the mere fact it is free would make the licensing questionable. Consider a service like unsplash: what vetting can there be that the people who upload actually hold the copyright? Do unsplash indemnify you if it turns out they never had permission? How does it look in a court, should it come to that? It’s not about paying money for the image as much as it’s about buying an assurance – even if it is only to be able to say "we acted in good faith and licensed this from a ‘reputable’ supplier.” Some legal teams are incredibly risk averse. Unsplash almost certainly isn’t considered by these sorts of customers. It’s not some kind of snobbery, it’s to avoid having to deal with the case where the one image that you build a multi-million dollar ad campaign on turns out not to have been improperly licensed.