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Graphical Manipulation - Beheaded and Sold?
popdookey asks: "Can a known image of me be beheaded and marketed as someone else without my permission? I just returned home to Georgia and discovered that my head had been replaced on a favorite photograph that was now being used to promote sandwiches. It was a great photo of a few of the old-time employees and founders of a very successful restaurant franchise taken in front of its original location. The faces of the employees have been replaced with those of the wealthy but absent owners to create a more marketable and nostalgic image. It is great advertising, but 92.3% of that body is mine as was 100% of its contribution. Is this legal without my permission, and if so, wouldn't this lead to historical fraud?"
For the most part, whoever took the picture, owns it.
Those paparazzi guys make a killing selling photos to the Enquirer and other tabloids.
...if you let me know how you found out precisely 92.3% of you was on this modified picture...
I love computers!
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such headless TV advertisements as "Don't Stand Up at Cedar Point" and "Sleepy Hollow Mattress Sale This Weekend"
all your head shots are belong to us
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
If the person who owns the copyright to the photo (that's NOT you, it's the person who took it) disagrees with it, then you can sue the offender. Else, you have to face the consequences ;-)
Key questions you need to answer:
1) Did you sign a written consent form allowing the company to use your photograph?
2) Do you have the original photograph to use as evidence that you are in fact the one in the picture?
3) Do you have current contact information for the other employees in the photograph that have been similarly misused?
4) Do you know when the ads first appeared, how long they have been running, and in what medium (newspaper, TV, magazines, web, etc.)?
5) Do you have samples of the advertisment in question that could be used as evidence?
6) What jurisdiction applies? If the ad was shown in California you may have more protections for use of your photograph; Georgia only appears to have such restrictions for serious crimes like child pornography.
Your action does not concern "fraud", per se. Fraud, legally, is decieving others for gain. What you need to focus on is the state statues that require an employee to provide written consent before that employee's photograph can be used for marketing purposes.
For more details, see a general discussion on the issue from FindLaw:
For instance, see California Civil Code Section 3344-3346. I'll quote a small portion of this section which directly applies to your situation:
The company is likely to argue that, because your head is not visible, you cannot be readily identified under 3344(b)(2):
The company may also insist that your likeness is not "essential" to the advertisement, per 3344(c):
I just returned home to Georgia and discovered that my head had been replaced on a favorite photograph that was now being used to promote sandwiches.
The terms of your contract specifically state that we can use your likeness in any way we want, including photoshopping some other dude's head onto your body.
Thank you,
The Subway Legal Department
You are generally protected from your likeness being used for commercial promotion purposes. This is largely to protect you from unwillingly becoming the spokesperson for a Herpes treatment. However, if they chopped off your head, I bet you'll have a hard time saying that it's your likeness.
The fallback argument is that whoever took the original picture holds copyright, and the head-chopping promoters may not have secured rights properly. Track down the photographer and see if they knowingly released the photograph to these people.
"the cost of taking a new photo with Polish employees would have been trivial"
I'm guessing you have never hired a professional photographer?
I figure 3 days for the trip to Poland, 100+ shots of large-format film stock, add in airfare plus shipping costs for lighting and cameras, living expenses for photographer and assistant(s), disruption to plant while you pick out 50 employees and get them to pose, plus buy-out on the rights for the image(s) that you high-res scan and digitally comp together to get a final pic where everyone is smiling and no-one is blinking, and you'll be lucky to have change from $30,000.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Get a laugh out of it, then let it drop.
Otherwise you are going to have to get a lawyer, and consider what you could win (if anything) in a court of law. It's probably not going to be worth your while, the most likely thing is that they'll stop using that photo or photoshop in a completely different body. How does that benefit you? What will you get out of the whole affair other than wasting a few months of your precious time?
Personally, I think there are upsides to this. Suppose this chain becomes the next KFC, you'll have a funny story to tell out of the whole situation, which is probably more than you'll end up with by hiring a lawyer. Hell, I'd probably send them a letter mentionining I'd saw the photo and telling them it's Ok with me as long as they don't use my face.
For one thing think of the pickup lines, "I don't know about you, Ali's Felafel Pit really wanted my body."
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