My photo used in the paper

FensterDJ

Hi, I took a photo of at the recent Bruce Springsteen gigs, that I put up on my twitter, facebook and instagram, it also appeared on Broadsheet.ie with my permission

The next day, it was in the Evening Herald, with no credit and without my permission, were they within their rights to use it? public domain rights or something like that?

I know once you put a pic online there is very little you can do about what happens to it after that in terms of internet use, but to be printed in a profit making established paper, surely I should be entitled to some compensation or at least a credit

thebaz

FensterDJ wrote: »

but to be printed in a profit making established paper, surely I should be entitled to some compensation or at least a credit

absolutly you should - no one (even online) , should use your image without consent (minimum) - pcphoto was the expert on these maters , but he is now gone

AnCatDubh

The herald aren't the worst. They tend to print first pay later - cynically you could add if they're caught but I believe that they're ok about it normally. Contact them to see what their going rate is. You won't be rich from it but it would be enough to have a decent night out.

Suggestion: don't go threatening legals on them. Initial approach should be: I see you've used my image in the paper dated x edition y and you'd like to know where to send the invoice / if they have a standard rate card.

Neither you or they will want to go a legals route.

magicbastarder

FensterDJ wrote: »

it also appeared on Broadsheet.ie with my permission

did broadsheet at least link back to your page?

lisatiffany

The herald aren't the worst. They tend to print first pay later <- I don't know maybe it depends on the article but I've had work featured in 9 papers this month and more than once it was the Herald. They called up and said what they wanted then we agreed on a price and the dead line to print was anything between 2hrs and 2 days. I sent an invoice right away and the money appeared in my account 2 to 3 days later. I don't get how a paper could take something offline and send it to print without having confirmation from the original author for its use. Not to sound rude but are you 100% sure its your picture they are using because at some events you get so many people coming away with the exact same shot, its happened me more times than I can remember. I think my next set of pictures are in the Herald on the 26th, the dead line was 2hrs yet its still days before it goes to print - ?. Then there is the Irish Independent, I had a deadline of less than an hour to get them a lot of pictures for a feature in their Life Magazine on the 29th. The British Daily Mail last week was very similar except for one thing, a journalist caught a similar picture to the one I took, it wasn't though and that's what I mean about being sure its your own first.

The only one recently that went to print and didn't ask until afterwards was Grazia Magazine, they told me afterwards and said they couldn't reach me that they had the wrong contact details - kind of suspect but they paid up. I'd say follow up on it and if you have some proof that it is yours (original RAW file?) mention it, you might get anywhere between 30 to 45 euros for it. I sold the Dubliner Herald 3 images recently for 175 euros with the usual max DPI of 300, if its just the one image they might give you a gesture of about 25 euros but it all depends on if it was 100% your image and not someone with the same shot. Oh and on that, at an event I covered recently I had some people stand for a group shot, spent a while making sure it was all framed right and the lighting was good/etc. As soon as I started taking the shot a journalist from The Sun came along and started to take the same shot, I saw both of our images and the only difference was hers was shot on a Canon - the paper went with mine because I simply got mine processed and emailed first. It does happen where you come away with the exact same shot as someone else but don't mention anything legal just ask do they know where the image came from and give them some info on why you think it could be yours.

mdebets

You can sent them an invoice, but as you have posted the photo on twitter, facebook and instagram, you have basically given these sites a licence to do with your photo what they want.
The Evening Herald most likely took it from one of these sites, so you might not have a comeback there (don't know what these site have as T&C in regards to people taking pictures, but I have never heard of any paper being sued by Twitter or Facebook for taking a picture from their site).

What you also need to think about is that you probably took the photo illegally (check the terms & conditions of your ticket). Even if they allowed taking photos, I would doubt that they would have given you the rights to sell these pictures. So Bruce or his agents or the concert promoter might come after you for the money.

FensterDJ

thanks for the replies, it's definitely my photo, I'm not in any way a photographer, I just took it on my phone

it's this

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/07/18/enda-at-springsteen/

I contacted to guy who wrote the article, and he said the pic just turned up in his Springsteen photostream, so it was used, he said he would find out about what happened for me but he hasn't got back to me

I have no intention of going into the herald all guns blazing, I just thought it weird not to be asked, obviously some money would be nice too

Oktay

Just for educational purposes, here is the legality of your case as far as I know from experience, as a photographer;

You own the copyright of the photograph you took. In theory, what the newspaper did is a breach of copyright act and it is a criminal offence (keep in mind, I said in theory, Garda do not get too excited about these cases). Also in theory, knowingly not reporting a crime is a crime too!!
If you can't get the issue resolved and want to pursue it, you need to pay about €200 to a solicitor to issue a letter to the offender and give them enough time to correct their mistake and compansate accordingly including solicitor fees. However, if they ignore solicitor's letter (likely), your only option is to go to court. Small claims courts do not cover copyright issues, so it needs to be a district court. This would cost you roughly 1500-2000 as you need to hire a barrister, so I estimate you can just about cover the cost if you win the case (very likely).

I do not recommend you to sue anyone especially a newspaper with a pile of solicitors. And if you do it, it should be for principle, not for money, as even if you win you will not make any money out of it.

mdebets

Oktay wrote: »

Just for educational purposes, here is the legality of your case as far as I know from experience, as a photographer;

You own the copyright of the photograph you took. In theory, what the newspaper did is a breach of copyright act and it is a criminal offence (keep in mind, I said in theory, Garda do not get too excited about these cases). Also in theory, knowingly not reporting a crime is a crime too!!
If you can't get the issue resolved and want to pursue it, you need to pay about €200 to a solicitor to issue a letter to the offender and give them enough time to correct their mistake and compansate accordingly including solicitor fees. However, if they ignore solicitor's letter (likely), your only option is to go to court. Small claims courts do not cover copyright issues, so it needs to be a district court. This would cost you roughly 1500-2000 as you need to hire a barrister, so I estimate you can just about cover the cost if you win the case (very likely).

I do not recommend you to sue anyone especially a newspaper with a pile of solicitors. And if you do it, it should be for principle, not for money, as even if you win you will not make any money out of it.

It's not as clear-cut as this, as the photo was posted on Facebook and Twitter and apparently taken from there (if I interpret the OP's last post correctly). In this case, he has to check their T&Cs and see if they allow to take pictures from them, and if they do, there was no breach of copyright, as the OP gave Facebook and Twitter a licence to do with his photo as they wish.

Oktay

mdebets wrote: »

It's not as clear-cut as this, as the photo was posted on Facebook and Twitter and apparently taken from there (if I interpret the OP's last post correctly). In this case, he has to check their T&Cs and see if they allow to take pictures from them, and if they do, there was no breach of copyright, as the OP gave Facebook and Twitter a licence to do with his photo as they wish.

Facebook & Twitter ask for the royalty free right of artwork posted in order to be able to keep your photos on their servers, publish on their site under your profile and to cover themselves where it is used by others but do not give any sort of usage rights to anyone. So any usage by a third party is illegal. Some of my work is posted on facebook too.
Flickr and Linkedin are not that straight forward though.

mdebets

Oktay wrote: »

Facebook & Twitter ask for the royalty free right of artwork posted in order to be able to keep your photos on their servers, publish on their site under your profile and to cover themselves where it is used by others but do not give any sort of usage rights to anyone. So any usage by a third party is illegal. Some of my work is posted on facebook too.

They may officially tell that, but their T&Cs are telling a different story.

Twitter T&Cs wrote:

You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

We may modify or adapt your Content in order to transmit, display or distribute it over computer networks and in various media and/or make changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to any requirements or limitations of any networks, devices, services or media.

That basically says, you are still owning the copyright to your pictures, but we can pass them on to any company we like, without you getting any money for it.

What makes the case of the OP even more complicated is that he took the pictures in a situation, where he either was not allowed to take pictures or if he was allowed to take pictures is not allowed to use them commercially (he needs to check the T&Cs of his tickets to the concert).

Oktay

mdebets wrote: »

They may officially tell that, but their T&Cs are telling a different story.



That basically says, you are still owning the copyright to your pictures, but we can pass them on to any company we like, without you getting any money for it.

What makes the case of the OP even more complicated is that he took the pictures in a situation, where he either was not allowed to take pictures or if he was allowed to take pictures is not allowed to use them commercially (he needs to check the T&Cs of his tickets to the concert).

I struggled with T&Cs for a while too. They are hard to understand. What I found in relation to T&Cs of Twitter and facebook is that 3rd party refers to application providers, data handling companies working for them etc "...who partner with Twitter....". This is to cover themselves, they would not be providing/selling/giving peoples pictures to newspapers. It would require totally different terms in T&C.

Conditions under which photos are taken doesn't matter, if he takes the photos, he has the copyright. He may be sued for this but this is a different story :-)

Anyway, this is all about knowing our rights, I am not suggesting him to sue anyone.

FensterDJ

I don't know where the Herald got my pic from, I'm assuming Broadsheet.ie, I'm not in the slightest bit interested in taking legal action against the Herald or anything like that, It was actually a novelty to see my photo in the paper,

On the other hand, they are plenty of people, many on this board I'm sure, who are trying to make a living from photography and we can't just let newspapers use photos without permission, uncredited and uncompensated, so for that reason I'm interested in pursuing the issue, and also to try to get some money, why not?

Zillah

mdebets wrote: »

That basically says, you are still owning the copyright to your pictures, but we can pass them on to any company we like, without you getting any money for

Unless they sought and were granted permission for its use from Twitter/Facebook then this is entirely moot. And there is no way they did that.

nucker

This is why I would never put photo that I really care for up on Facebook/instagram.

Facebook thinks it can use people's photos w/o permission just because of some "agreement"

Gregor Samsa

mdebets wrote: »

That basically says, you are still owning the copyright to your pictures, but we can pass them on to any company we like, without you getting any money for it.

The purpose of clauses like this is not to have a free-for-all where anything uploaded suddenly becomes the property of the service in question, for them to do what they want with. Pretty much any online company that host images have to have a clause like that in order to be able to operate properly. For example, say they use someone like Akamai to speed up and distribute the serving of images across the globe - copies of each image uploaded by a user will be cached by Akamai in their network of data centres. There would be other instances to do with distributed storage, data backup, security, DOS attack mitigation and caching that could necessitate that the image be held and served by a third party.

In order to be legally able to do that, they need a clause that states that you've given them permission to transfer the image to a third party. Running a service like this is not just as simple as an image being on Twitter's server (or whoever), and people viewing it directly from there.

smash

An awful lot of this going on recently. I'd wonder how many photographs are published daily where nobody gets any credit or payment.

Zillah

phutyle wrote: »

The purpose of clauses like this is not to have a free-for-all where anything uploaded suddenly becomes the property of the service in question, for them to do what they want with. Pretty much any online company that host images have to have a clause like that in order to be able to operate properly. For example, say they use someone like Akamai to speed up and distribute the serving of images across the globe - copies of each image uploaded by a user will be cached by Akamai in their network of data centres. There would be other instances to do with distributed storage, data backup, security, DOS attack mitigation and caching that could necessitate that the image be held and served by a third party.

In order to be legally able to do that, they need a clause that states that you've given them permission to transfer the image to a third party. Running a service like this is not just as simple as an image being on Twitter's server (or whoever), and people viewing it directly from there.

Not to mention that for companies with revenues in the billions making a few quid selling someone's photo is not worth the media doom-storm it would cause.

J_A_F_A

Hi,
Just came across this thread while browsing.
Does anyone use Domotix? or is a 50:50 split not normal?
(are there other agency sites out there better/worse/same?)

Thanks.
J_

FensterDJ

I went into the Herald office, spoke to someone from the photo desk, they were very polite and apologetic and I am being issued a cheque

AnCatDubh

FensterDJ wrote: »

I went into the Herald office, spoke to someone from the photo desk, they were very polite and apologetic and I am being issued a cheque

Thought that'd be the case. Well done you!

\o/

FanadMan

FensterDJ wrote: »

I went into the Herald office, spoke to someone from the photo desk, they were very polite and apologetic and I am being issued a cheque

Been watching this since first post. Great to hear you got it sorted

HPT

FensterDJ wrote: »

I went into the Herald office, spoke to someone from the photo desk, they were very polite and apologetic and I am being issued a cheque

Glad to hear it. €€€ Ballpark?

FensterDJ

cheque arrived on Friday, 80 quid, best thing is the tickets to springsteen were free, so I actually got paid to go see Brucie. nice

Oktay

well done

CabanSail

FensterDJ wrote: »

cheque arrived on Friday, 80 quid, best thing is the tickets to springsteen were free, so I actually got paid to go see Brucie. nice

Was €80 enough to compensate you for having to endure that?

Good result.

AnimalRights

CabanSail wrote: »

Was €80 enough to compensate you for having to endure that?

Good result.

I would assume most people don't go to the bother to follow through so the Herald gets 'caught' for having to pay a fee every now and then....that's not a bad result for them either.

CabanSail

I meant enduring Bruce Springstain!

weirdtodamoon

I know this turned out ok. But if you upload your pics online, you can only expect people to take them. Its a waste of time trying to. If you want to keep your photos then don't put them online :rolleyes:

Gumbo

weirdtodamoon wrote: »

I know this turned out ok. But if you upload your pics online, you can only expect people to take them. Its a waste of time trying to. If you want to keep your photos then don't put them online :rolleyes:

no you cant :rolleyes:

DaireQuinlan

kceire wrote: »

no you cant :rolleyes:

Evidently you CAN, as shown by this and a myriad of other threads. I'm not condoning this in any way of course, but it is a fact that it happens. weirdtodamoon has it right in that the only way to avoid this is just to not put them online.

Reoil

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

weirdtodamoon has it right in that the only way to avoid this is just to not put them online.

I think the best way is to put them online with a watermark which cannot be removed. That way you get your photo online and people know who to ask if they want to use/buy it.

Reoil

This is an example of a good watermark:
http://www.pacemakerpressintl.com/photo?id=327102
People can see the photo, but not steal it.

This is an example of a poor watermark:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8423/7692475196_b7a72bd5fe_c.jpg
People can steal the photo and crop/photoshop out the watermark.

(Sorry - Adz247, don't mean to pick on you specifically! Your photo just happened to be one of the last photos I look at on here.)

ronanc15

Reoil wrote: »

This is an example of a good watermark:
http://www.pacemakerpressintl.com/photo?id=327102
People can see the photo, but not steal it.

This is an example of a poor watermark:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8423/7692475196_b7a72bd5fe_c.jpg
People can steal the photo and crop/photoshop out the watermark.

(Sorry - Adz247, don't mean to pick on you specifically! Your photo just happened to be one of the last photos I look at on here.)

I wouldn't call Adam's a watermark, more so a logo?

Reoil

ronanc15 wrote: »

I wouldn't call Adam's a watermark, more so a logo?

Principle still applies. A lot of people would put one single watermark somewhere around the perimeter of the image which is easily cropped or removed*. Yes, the other watermark is more intrusive and detracts attention from the image itself, but it's the better one to use for prevention of image theft.

What does everybody else think?


*I do/have done so myself.

AlizeHall

Oh, that's pretty bad. Putting some watermark will help you prevent such case like this.

Gumbo

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Evidently you CAN, as shown by this and a myriad of other threads. I'm not condoning this in any way of course, but it is a fact that it happens. weirdtodamoon has it right in that the only way to avoid this is just to not put them online.

yeah sorry, i meant in the legal sense, you cant just take them.

photoclub

Just "showing up" in a photostream is no excuse for using it. Being given credit after the event would be a bit late. I would send them a reasonable bill, as close to their rate card as possible.

Farmlife

Hate to drag up an old thread but just saw the Sunday world used one of my photos with my watermark cropped out, has anyone had dealings with them and what are they like? Thanks

Kenny Logins

Farmlife wrote: »

Hate to drag up an old thread but just saw the Sunday world used one of my photos with my watermark cropped out, has anyone had dealings with them and what are they like? Thanks

Why don't you call them and come back to tell us. :pac:

mayo.mick

Farmlife wrote: »

Hate to drag up an old thread but just saw the Sunday world used one of my photos with my watermark cropped out, has anyone had dealings with them and what are they like? Thanks

Send them an invoice and tell us how you get on?

magicbastarder

any idea where they'd have seen it?

Farmlife

Dropped into them today, really nice to deal with, very apologetic, said the watermark was cropped before they got it, and from how they got it i believe them. All in all I'm happy my photo made it to print and I'm getting paid for it.

Kenny Logins

Where did they get it from?

Farmlife

The model cropped out my watermark and submitted it for a competition she's doing with the paper

Kenny Logins

Oops, not a good idea to piss off the photographers.

Farmlife

Wasn't all that pissed off, just glad i copped it

Corkbah

Farmlife wrote: »

The model cropped out my watermark and submitted it for a competition she's doing with the paper

I'd be pi$$ed off with the model .... and would make sure he/she knows what they are allowed and not allowed to do with any images that I give them.

Farmlife

Corkbah wrote: »

I'd be pi$$ed off with the model .... and would make sure he/she knows what they are allowed and not allowed to do with any images that I give them.

I'll live and learn. It was at a press launch for an event and although I didn't lay down any rules i'd be quit sure she knew what she was at when she start cropping.

There's another competition running at the moment with loads of Irish girls entering, Rule number one states model must have the photographers written consent to use the photo. So far I've seen 4 of my photos entered and I'm sure I would have remembered giving consent

magicbastarder

are you going to contact the organisers to clarify the matter?

Farmlife

magicbastarder wrote: »

are you going to contact the organisers to clarify the matter?

To be honest no, I wouldn't feel good about recking the girls chance, now if they win id contact the model, but sometimes its good to have a bitch about it