Irelandphotodeals.com copyright question

tororosso

Hi there, just looking for some feedback on this. My girlfriend has bought two photobook coupons to be fulfilled through www.irelandphotodeals.com. I was just in the process of putting through a registration to upload some photos when I read these terms and conditions:

4. Your Copyright

Generally under copyright laws the owner of the copyright in images or photographs is the person who created the images or took the photographs. You represent and warrant to us that you are the owner of the copyright or have the express permission of the owner of the copyright in the images or photographs which you submit to the Service. We claim no ownership rights in any images or photographs submitted to the Service. Solely for the purpose of enabling your images or photographs to be uploaded and made available on the Service and to fulfil print orders made for your images and photographs you grant to us and to any store which fulfills print orders of your images or photographs, a perpetual worldwide non-exclusive transferable royalty-free copyright licence to copy, reproduce, display, modify, adapt or alter, transmit, communicate to staff and distribute your images or photographs. You acknowledge that we have no control over the use of your images or photographs and shall not be held liable for any use, publication or copying of your images and photographs. You waive all rights of action or other claims you may have against us in respect of any such use, publication or copying.
COPYRIGHT CLAIMS

We respect the intellectual property rights of others. In the event that we receive a written complaint alleging copyright infringement by a member, we will refer the complaint to the member concerned. It is the member's responsibility to resolve any such complaint. Should the member not resolve the complaint satisfactorily and advise us, in writing, of the resolution within seven days of the date on which the matter was referred to the member (the "Referral Date"), we reserve the right, in our absolute discretion, to suspend the membership until such time as the matter is resolved. If we have not been notified within sixty days of the Referral Date that the matter has been satisfactorily resolved, we reserve the right, in our absolute discretion, to terminate the member's membership.

I understand that you have to agree to allow them the right to fulfill the order but would there be anything in those terms and conditions, particularly regarding copyright, whereby they are able to use the images outside the simple fulfillment of processing the order and printing out the alblum??

stcstc

yes

tororosso

stcstc wrote: »

yes

Thanks stcstc, I have my suspicions on that as well. Seems a pretty underhand operation to be honest. I can't understand why terms and conditions like this are included when you consider they are getting the customer's money and business for the albums. Last thing I want is to submit family photos and see them on some generic site :mad:

Girlfriend bought two of these coupons on Grabone by the way! Glad I had a read of those conditions!

DaireQuinlan

"Solely for the purpose of enabling your images or photographs to be uploaded and made available on the Service and to fulfil print orders made for your images and photographs..."

The above seems pretty explicit, the rest looks like pretty standard boilerplate stuff. Photobox has something similar in their T&Cs. I wouldn't get too concerned about it.

tororosso

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

"Solely for the purpose of enabling your images or photographs to be uploaded and made available on the Service and to fulfil print orders made for your images and photographs..."

The above seems pretty explicit, the rest looks like pretty standard boilerplate stuff. Photobox has something similar in their T&Cs. I wouldn't get too concerned about it.

I agree with you on that quote Daire. However what gets me is the wording that follows:
"a perpetual worldwide non-exclusive transferable royalty-free copyright licence to copy, reproduce, display, modify, adapt or alter, transmit, communicate to staff and distribute your images or photographs. You acknowledge that we have no control over the use of your images or photographs and shall not be held liable for any use, publication or copying of your images and photographs."
From this, it seems that the photographs will now be under their control and could feature in their site pages, menus etc. Also the last sentence I have quoted seems a bit odd as why would anybody else, other than the company, be able to access those photos and publicise them and/or copy them?

Take for example, private family photos that have never appeared online before. If I go and do up an album then they should be the only other people who have possible control over those photos. How else, if I don't publish them online etc, would they manage to appear elsewhere in any format?

I know where you are coming from with the quote you have highlighted, but it seems there is wriggle room in those T&Cs for the images to be used by them outside of publishing the album?

DaireQuinlan

probably because they're just a lightweight operation, and farm off all the images to some other place to actually do the printing or photobook making or whatever, so it's just covering-their-own-ass boilerplate legalese. Practically every online service has some variety of this. Photobox has it, flickr has it, pix.ie has something similar. Upload anything anywhere and you're taking that risk. And indeed, they COULD be completely unscrupulous cowboy operators intent only on harvesting images for some nefarious schemes, but chances are they aren't

tororosso

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

probably because they're just a lightweight operation, and farm off all the images to some other place to actually do the printing or photobook making or whatever, so it's just covering-their-own-ass boilerplate legalese. Practically every online service has some variety of this. Photobox has it, flickr has it, pix.ie has something similar. Upload anything anywhere and you're taking that risk. And indeed, they COULD be completely unscrupulous cowboy operators intent only on harvesting images for some nefarious schemes, but chances are they aren't

Cheers for the responses Daire I guess it is easy to get caught up on these things! I dread to think what those nefarious schemes might be :eek::D

stcstc

well possibly is never good enough. once you agree to the terms if they DO use your images then you have no comeback.

PCPhoto

whatever happend to good old fashioned businesses .... where if you wanted an image printed ...it was printed and the printer didn't hold/keep a copy of your image (just incase they wanted to print it themselves)

The quicker people stop using services based on their terms and conditions and explain to the companies that the reason I'm not using your service is that your terms and conditions state you are not responsible for my images and by using your service I give you the right to use my images whatever way you want and theres nothing I can do about it.

I'm all for businesses covering their back legally - but when the business try to hide the fact that they will not be the only people to have access to your images ... then I have a problem..... simply explain to the customer you are a shell and have organised a deal with X printer to lower the cost the ordinary punter has to shell out.....or explain that the site does not perform onsite printing and images must be sent to printing Dept or external printer .... and as such they will be responsible for printing the image.

Honesty is the best policy.

aidan18

Got one recently & what I couldn't believe was that the photobook was posted from AUSTRALIA !!

DaireQuinlan

aidan18 wrote: »

Got one recently & what I couldn't believe was that the photobook was posted from AUSTRALIA !!

yeah doing a whois on the domain earlier indicated it was owned by some Australian domain name resellers.

pullandbang

xlatinoheatx wrote: »

I agree with everyone.

Gotta love these lucid, indepth contributions to the debate. We'd get nowhere without them.......:rolleyes: