Unsplash has been clear with basic intent. Unsplash provides high-quality royalty-free images for use in development, design, and publishing where the person did not have access to those resources all for free and now for nearly all use.

I have had issues when I felt like larger platforms such as Medium and WP gained my images https://unsplash.com/@jake_hawkes but I also realized I agreed to the premise which still holds true. Users like me who uploaded images early on in the CC0 license understood this, and frankly, if Unsplash went against this in any meaningful way in their terms would have to pull my images from their site, track down each use and facilitate their removal, and would likely get a cease and desist letter from my lawyer and further action if they were not able to comply based on our agreement. I would never, click ‘accept’ of anything that meaningfully changed this intent.

I love Unsplash, and while may professional photographers and royalty media outlets may not, the fact remains if you want art directed images you need a professional art directed shoot or a large stock library. For the rest of us, there is Unsplash.

Frankly, I have had to deal with Getty for an image of a fishing guide in an Idaho river that was published on a website. The website it was published on was the angler in the photo. So there you go, who has been the opportunist, using embedded meta, lawyers, threats, and outrageous extortion methods to ‘protect their image rights’?