[George Lama]

A few months back I posted about a local small town paper wanting me to work with them photographing a baby-calendar. After a few stumbles, the shoots took place and finally we got our copies of the calendar. Not only did we get our name on the calendar, but more people know about us thanks to the free publicity. All good stuff.

So we're flipping through the calendar pages, happy with the colors, layout, and print quality (offset printing done by a local newspaper can be iffy at best - specially with registration being off just enough to make everything look blurry). When we get to the back page, where our "free ad designed by the newspaper" was, we just about swallowed our tongues. There were two family portrait photos used in the ad, both photos I had taken a few months back, but certainly did not release to them to use.

I called the publisher, incensed beyond all belief. When I finally got a hold of her and bluntly asked her where did they get the photos, she asked me if I had ever run an ad using those photos. I said No. She then asked me if I had them on my website, and after I said Yes, she went on to say, matter of fact, "Oh, then that's where she got them from." There was no surprise to her voice, no concern, nothing.

I lambasted her on the fact they took the photos without asking, that there was no authorization or release from the families for these photos to be used in such a way, and that they were blatantly ignoring copyright law. I asked her how is it possible that they think it's OK to "go steal images from someone's website without asking", to which she responded "well, they usually go to websites to get logos and artwork." *Holy ______ (fill in the blank with your favorite expletive).

I played it out more, telling her I have no idea what these families were going to say to me once they saw or heard their photo was used without their permission, whether I was going to be sued or not, and had they bothered giving me a proof, I would have balked back then. She tried to play it down saying the designer didn't know, that she doubts the parents will be upset since they are already on my website, why would they be upset about a few hundred calendars...

She even offered to talk to the parents directly, to make sure they were OK with it. She even had the kidney stones to ask me for their contact info. I said "I cannot release anyone's contact information without their consent, otherwise I would be violating their privacy." All this was from the mouth of the publisher herself.

I told her "I know you didn't become a publisher being unaware of copyright law and privacy. Had another publication copied one paragraph from your paper and printed it somewhere else without your permission, I'm sure you would have gone out of your way to remedy that situation." Not much came out of her then...

After me hammering on her for 20 minutes, she asked me what I wanted to do, since the calendars were already out. I told her I wanted a letter stating the paper took the images from my website without my permission, that they were used without my authorization, and that they are fully responsible. She said she would.

FYI: I have model releases from everyone allowing me to use the photos for promotional purposes, portfolio, or in my exhibits/studio/etc. What irks my marbles is the fact that a newspaper employee went to my website, in essence stole my images (low quality, low res, low DPI), and the publisher acted like it was a normal thing.

Any opinions, thoughts, comments?

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Last edited by George Lama; 12-28-2007 at 10:59 PM.

[PDL]

Welcome to the world of the web, where everything - if it is on a web site - is "Free".

I would suggest that the next time you decide to do this - get everything in writing as specify what can and can not be used. On your site make a blatant notice that the images are copyrighted and can not be used without an explicit contract with you.

It is a pain in the behind to have to be a harda*s, but register your images and send the publisher a cease and desist letter. Make sure that the person who went out and "borrowed" your images gets the message. Also make sure that the images on your website have copyright notices - on them and embedded in the EXIF (really IPTC) fields.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[SpecialK]

I am NOT a programmer/techie, but...
I have a short text-based script (written by someone who knows what they are doing) that disables the right-click option of a mouse, which discourages many people - hopefully - from trying to download my unique images and time-consumingly made transcripts on my particular TV-show website (my former hobby).

You just paste it between the <HEAD> and <BODY> portions of your HTML. I guess you need Java, too, as it's a Java script.

Email me at wykyle at msn dot com if you want it. It's easy - no muss, no fuss.

[joe1955]

I understand your frustration, but Unfortunately since it was a newspaper company it is common for them to publish logos pictures and even text from someone else's document.

I am not a lawyer but, from what I understand it is perfectly legal, at least here in the US. You see you're not only dealing with the copyright laws, you're dealing with the fair use act as well.

The fair use act, allows news organizations and learning institutions access to any published materials that they need without paying royalties. And if I'm not mistaken it only applies to new stories and learning institutions in the pursuit of higher education of its students, it also includes research groups. It does not include any other moneymaking venture.

There is even a clause in the Americans with disabilities act, that allows people with disabilities access to documents and media in a form that they can use. This allows companies to freely distribute books over the Internet without paying royalties as long as it is intended for use by the visually impaired.

So where it may be understandable that they thought they could use your photos in this manner, And I don't know all the legal points about this, they probably assumed that the fair use act would apply, but in this case it does not sound as if it would. And it will

Also just as a point to clear up any misunderstanding about copywriting any material:

just claiming that certain material is copyrighted, does not give you any legal right of protection under the US copyright laws. You must go through the legal motions, and pay the copyright fees to obtain copyright status.


P. S. A note on using Java script to disable the right mouse button. This is unreliable and can be easily disabled by turning off JavaScript in the browser. This is a common practice used by many Web surfers.


joe1955

[mattdm]

This isn't the normal image-stealing situation, since they were designing an advertisement for you. It certainly is technically true that they needed to ask your permission, but it also isn't "holy ___" that they'd do that.

[TaoMaas]

The fair use act, allows news organizations and learning institutions access to any published materials that they need without paying royalties. And if I'm not mistaken it only applies to new stories and learning institutions in the pursuit of higher education of its students, it also includes research groups. It does not include any other moneymaking venture.

News organizations do have more leeway regarding copyright laws, but only when the material is used in a news context. It's considered editorial usage. Once they cross over into commercial usage, the rules change. And this newspaper DID cross that line when they created the ad for the photographer. I used to create promotional spots for a tv station. Sometimes footage that was perfectly okay to use in our news story could not be used in the tv spot promoting that news story. Same footage...same station...different usages...different rules.

[PDL]

snip

Also just as a point to clear up any misunderstanding about copywriting any material:

just claiming that certain material is copyrighted, does not give you any legal right of protection under the US copyright laws. You must go through the legal motions, and pay the copyright fees to obtain copyright status.

snip
joe1955

Read the bottom of this site:
A brief intro to copyright
to quote:
"Under the Berne copyright convention, which almost all major nations have signed, every creative work is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in tangible form. No notice is necessary, though it helps legal cases. No registration is necessary, though it's needed later to sue. The copyright lasts until 70 years after the author dies. Facts and ideas can't be copyrighted, only expressions of creative effort."

Read this site too: - off of the one quoted above.
10 Big Myths about copyright explained
Pay attention to point(s) 1, 4, 7, 8, 9 and to some extent 3. Also read the first secition of the summary.

Read this:
ASMP: Copyright Application Tutorial

When in doubt - go to the source:
Copyright Office Basics
read the section on "Who can claim Copyright?" again I quote:
"Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright."

Net result - you take the picture - you own the copyright unless you have specifically signed away those rights. You should place the copyright notice in the image (just try to not have the notice be bigger than the subject - lame artists have their name dominate the image) and embedd the notice in the IPTC field in the image. Remember - they are your rights to lose.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[SpecialK]

P. S. A note on using Java script to disable the right mouse button. This is unreliable and can be easily disabled by turning off JavaScript in the browser. This is a common practice used by many Web surfers.


joe1955

Perhaps, but it is block for the casual user and might even cause others to give a second thought to downloading something.

[mattdm]

Perhaps, but it is block for the casual user and might even cause others to give a second thought to downloading something.

Oh my god it is annoying. There are 500 reasons I might want to right click, and precious few of them are that I want to "steal" your image. And if I wanted to do that, I'd use Page Info anyways. Blocking right click doesn't prevent anything except a pleasant experience on your web site. Don't do it.

[Tom M]

sing for this year... laughter, woman, etc, etc...


dream on...

dream on.. dream on...


NO COPYRIGHT

[George Lama]

As far as right click disable, people can still do ALT-PrintScreen and grab the image that way. I would rather use a Java/Flash loader to keep it elegant while making it a bit more complex for the average person who wants to grab images.

As to the paper - They might have been designing an add for me, but they never asked me about the ad or its content. We offered to make it for them and submit it, they said no, the ad will be designed by the paper. Our hands were tied here. Little did we know we were never going to see a proof and were too busy to realize three weeks had passed and we hadn't heard anything from the paper.

After taking another look at the ad, they added business hours which are 3 months out of date (they copied them from an ad I ran back in August) and apparently used a cut/paste to add a tag line to the ad. You can see the difference in color between the two. It's laughable, but somewhat embarassing that "our" ad looks cut/paste.

I've decided I am writing to the publisher/board of the parent company of this newspaper and relaying this lovely story. I am certainly not advertising with them ever again and will push hard to affiliate myself with the newspaper the next town over (who covers our town as well). Blah.

[mattdm]

As to the paper - They might have been designing an add for me, but they never asked me about the ad or its content. We offered to make it for them and submit it, they said no, the ad will be designed by the paper. Our hands were tied here. Little did we know we were never going to see a proof and were too busy to realize three weeks had passed and we hadn't heard anything from the paper.

I agree that it was obnoxious. And in fact, I think you might make a stronger case with the publisher if you take that angle -- you should have been presented with a proof, because you need to approve anything that's printed in your name.

[PDL]

All of this comes down to the written agreement between the photographer and the publisher. When in doubt - get it in writing - and be a pain in the behind, treat this as a business, because that is what it is.

If you let someone step on you once, do not be surprised when the next one tries to walk in the footsteps.

As an aside - go to the next town and relate your story - sort of along the lines that these guys violate copyright do you? I can see the other towns newspaper calling up the editor and asking "We heard that you violate copyright in your internal promotion campaign - any comment?"

Now that would be sweet.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL