10/01/07 Do you know where your photos are?
I just came across this story about how Virgin Mobile Australia is using flickr photos on some of their ads, and how they are now facing a law suit. From the article:
On the billboard, Alison’s friend has vanished and so has the Adidas logo on her hat. Her image is accompanied by a mocking slogan — according to the ad, Alison is the kind of loser “pen friend” (pen pal) whom subscribers will finally be able to “dump” when they get a cellphone.
Someone saw this ad on the street, took a photo and uploaded it to flickr. As he points out, the ad rightfully credits the photographer with a link, as the Creative Common license requires, but the problem now is the agency would have also needed a model release.(Well, turns out the photographer had a non-commercial license after all, but that’s another story)
But the law suit isn’t what caught my attention. It was the reaction of the photographer to this. While the model was obviously concerned about the use of her image in a demeaning way, the photographer asked:
“where was this? do you think virgin mobile will give me stuff?”
Give me a break. How about worrying how your stuff is being used instead of trying to get free stuff? And how about making sure you choose the right license type for your online content? All my online stuff is under a Creative Commons non-commercial non-deriv license. That means that, if you give me credit, you can use my images as long as it’s not for a commercial purpose, and you can’t modify them.
Are you sure you know where your photos are?
Technorati Tags: flickr, virgin mobile, creative commons
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