July 29th, 2007
EPUK put up this cautionary article up last week that details the multiple ways in which photographers are being used and abused by publishers.
There’s a show in the UK called The Real Hustle in which con artists demonstrate their ruses. It’s done in the context of warning people not to fall for these scams, but I bet aspiring criminals use the show as a resource for new tricks (a strobist for miscreants, if you will…). Hopefully, this EPUK list doesn’t just serve to give publishers ideas! Fellow photogs, watch your backs!
July 25th, 2007
One could probably start a daily blog on cases of unlawful uses of photos, but in the case of travel photog Robert Burch, this one has a happy ending for the photographer. His photos were unlawfully used by a US travel agent and when the case went to court, he won a $64k settlement.
This story from PDN states that, “A federal judge recently awarded Burch a $63,866 judgment against a New York City travel agency, finding that the site used four of Burch’s photographs on its Web site without permission.”
The story says, “[Burch] is confident he and his attorney will be able to collect on the payment.”
It’s nice to see one of these infringement cases quickly resolved in favour of the photographer.
July 1st, 2007
Virgin Mobile seems to have just made a potentially big ‘oopsie.’
In a current outdoor advertising campaign, the giant media corporation grabbed a photo off flickr (from user chewywong) and slapped it onto a billboard. That’s not where the issue lies. The photo was licensed under the creative commons and all that was required for use of the photo was the printing of a link back to the source material and Virgin complied with this license.
The problem lies in that the image featured an unreleased minor. Using this photo without a model release opens up Virgin to a potential claim by the model. Currently, the model and her family are investigating their legal options in a claim against Virgin. They’re not pleased about the use and probably won’t have a big problem finding a lawyer to pick up the case for them.
The usage was originally discovered by a flickr user (sesh00) who hoped to inform a fellow user about the use of the photo. He saw the billboard in Australia and took a photo which he posted here (see that link for much of the commentary from the model and her family). He has also posted this thread that discusses the situation.
Instead of paying a photographer and model to produce a shoot, Virgin looks like it may be paying even more both in terms of cash and in public opinion.
May 22nd, 2007
Editorial Photographers UK have written their take on the flickr fiasco that I have covered here, here and here. Their story not only talks about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira’s stolen photos and flickr’s initial mistaken censorship of her problem, but also details the situation of the catalysts of this incident, the Only Dreemin poster company:
Essentially their defence is: ‘We’re not crooks, just really, really dumb.’ Briefly, their story is that a company called Wild Aspects and Panoramas Ltd offered them the images; they made some basic research on the deal, signed, and went ahead with their business. When contacted by Rebekka’s lawyers they immediately destroyed the images, and on legal advice avoided any further contact with Rebekka.
But, as EPUK points out, a good portion of their collection of posters are made up of Lichtenstein works and film stills for which they likely did not have permission to reprint. Perhaps the lawyers of the holders of those copyrights are a little bit more high-powered than the one Rebekka was able to hire and Only Dreemin may soon be quickly cooking in the hot water they boiled for themselves.
May 17th, 2007
One of the co-founders of flickr has apologized for the censorship situation that occurred yesterday.
Admitting that it was a mistake to delete the photo posted by Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira, co-founder Stewart Butterfield said that he and his staff were sorry for the error. Rebekka originally posted a photo detailing which of her works she claims had been illegally used by a London-based poster company.
Butterfield explained the rationale behind the deletion:
It’s important to be clear why the photo was deleted: it had nothing to do with a desire to silence Rebekka from calling attention to the outfit which had reportedly sold copies of her photos without knowledge or permission and without compensating her (in fact, even before her photo was deleted, we were investigating ways in which we could help Rebekka in this situation and prevent it from happening to others).
[…]
The photo was deleted — again, mistakenly — because of the direction the comments had gone, which included posting the personal information of the infringing company’s owner and suggestions for how best to exact revenge. It is an emotional issue and most people were there to support Rebekka in a positive way, but some of the angry mob behavior crossed the line.
Butterfield also mentioned that “several policies which will be changing as a direct result of this incident and the goal is that nothing like this ever happens again.”
The backlash against flickr has been substantial - Butterfield’s apology should go a good way towards smoothing over relations with an angry community. Now I just hope that the original problem that lead to this issue can be resolved. The copyright infringement of Rebekka’s work is still up in the air. Hopefully the support that has been given to her already will now be bolstered by flickr and a resolution can be worked out sooner than later.
May 16th, 2007
Yesterday, I wrote about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira and her claim that a poster company had stolen her photos. The case has taken an interesting and, in my view, unfortunate turn.
The flickr post where Rebekka had originally made her case and posted images of the stolen photos has been removed by flickr (owned by Yahoo) for the following reason:
Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.
Rebekka, on her blog, tells her side of the censorship story:
i don’t believe i was harrassing anyone. I was doing the only thing left for me to do when i had tried to seek legal assistance, after being victim to having my copyrighted work stolen and resold for profit by a dishonest company. I was told by my lawyer that i should just accept the fact and move on. Im not a big fan of giving up. I simply told the truth.
the fact that people sent harrassing letters to only-dreemin was a direct result of my post, but I myself wasnt harassing anyone. I was simply making it public that someone did wrong by me, and i think that’s a pretty far cry from harrassing some innocent party directly.
Seems unfair that flickr has decided on this course of action. That poster company must have a good lawyer on its side…
Thomas Hawk has lengthy editorial post about this subject for those irritated with flickr/yahoo’s decision.
May 15th, 2007
A couple of sites have taken up the case of photographer and flickr user Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira who claims to have had photos stolen from her by a London-based print selling company called Only Dreemin.
Read more about Rebekka’s plight here and here. Hopefully Rebekka can come out on top in the legal battle that is bound to ensue from this and that she gets what’s due to her for her photographs.
Most Popular Tags on dsphotographic.com:
Weblog
