Fans of The Office know him as Ryan Howard, but around the world, unlicensed images of actor B.J. Novak’s face is on everything from electric razors and cologne to face paint and rain ponchos. That’s because an image of the actor and director accidentally became labeled as free to use. Novak recently shared snapshots of his face on random global products, explaining the error but noting that he was “too amused” to do anything about it. Nonetheless, the incident highlights important copyright issues that photographers should understand.

While Novak said that the image was mistakenly shared to the public domain, attorney Aaron M. Arce Stark, a frequent Rangefinder contributor and founding attorney of Stark.Law, says that the term Creative Commons could be more correct to use in this instance, which is a way of licensing a copyrighted work. Stark notes that “public domain” is typically either an expired copyright or a work created by a government entity, such as images taken by the official White House photographer. Creative Commons, on the other hand, is a way of licensing a copyrighted work (but isn’t the same thing as a copyright) and states how an image can be used, whether that’s for non-commercial use or with attribution.

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What happens if an image is “accidentally” uploaded to a Creative Commons website? Is legal action up to the photographer or the person in the photograph? Once an image is licensed as Creative Commons, can that license be revoked? Rangefinder asked Stark to shed some light on Creative Commons in the wake of the actor’s humorous free stock photo snafu.

“A photographer can always revoke the Creative Commons rights,” explains Stark. “The photographer can remove it from the Creative Commons website and after that, the photographer can send notices and then DCMA takedown notices if the image is used once it is removed from the Creative Commons library. Wiping the image from the internet, he adds, is going to be a more difficult task.”

One exception is contracts. If the photographer signed a contract that prevents retracting those rights, the license may not be able to be revoked.

If someone that doesn’t own the copyright to an image designates it as Creative Commons, the photographer could pursue a copyright claim against them. The Creative Commons platform could also pursue action for violating their contract or user agreement, Stark says, as well as possible legal action from the person in the photograph.

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The person in the image—such as B.J. Novak, in this instance—also has rights. “Both people have rights,” Stark says. “The photographer has a copyright—they have ownership over the photo itself. When you have a copyright, it’s a bundle of rights to distribute, to sell. It’s your intellectual property. However, the subject of the photo also has a right to publicity. You can’t misappropriate likeness for any sort of commercial purpose.”

While the person in the image does not own the copyright, the right to publicity prevents someone’s likeness from being used commercially without their permission, Stark explains. Novak could, for example, take action against the companies using his image commercially, but under the right of privacy, not copyright law. The right of privacy, however, varies by state, with some more lenient than others. It also applies to only images used commercially, not for fine-art use.

While it’s unclear who took and uploaded B.J. Novak’s face to a Creative Commons platform—or even to which Creative Commons platform—the actor is sharing laughs over the images in an Instagram Story series he’s dubbed “Modeling.”