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Family's Christmas Photos Hawk Groceries In Prague
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Jeff and Danielle Smith sent a photo of themselves with their two young children to family and friends as a Christmas card, and posted the image on her blog and a few social networking websites. Then, last month, a friend of the family was vacationing in the Czech Republic when he spotted a full size poster of the Missouri family's smiling faces in the window of a local supermarket in Prague, advertising a grocery delivery service. The friend snapped a few pictures and sent them to the Smiths, who were flabbergasted. Mario Bertuccio, who owns the Grazie store in Prague, admitted that he had found the photo online but thought it was computer-generated and promised to remove it, and 'We'll be happy to write an e-mail with our apology,' he says. Meanwhile Mrs. Smith has received 180,000 visitors and over 500 comments on her blog since she posted the story. She says she is glad the photo wasn't used in an unseemly manner. 'Interesting. Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose,' writes Mrs. Smith. 'But quite creepy.'"
Some follow up. It appears the verdict was reversed on appeal to the CA Court of Appeals, and from there went to the CA Supreme Court which recently heard the case. According to this article from June 4, 2009, a decision is due in 90 days.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-coffee4-2009jun04,0,7389392.story
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
From http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Stolen_picture_used_on_a_huge_billboard_in_another_country "Her blog post and most of the comments here are retarded. That image was not stolen. There's no way that large format print was produced from a 500 pixel wide Facebook rip. If you read her post she says a professional photographer "friend" took the image. The friend most likely sold it to a microstock agency which is where the design agency for the Czech supermarket chain bought it and is now denying it. With tens of thousands of decent quality high resolution images taken on pro/semi-pro equipment available for a few dollars each on microstock sites, there's no way any designer would troll blogs to find a usable random photo of a family among point&shoot and low rez photos."
I'm sorry for the lack of clarity. I did in absolutely NO intend to support any kind of copyright infringement. I merely meant that the woman who posted the picture didn't feel that she was in any kind of position in which her security was compromised. She found it to be "quite creepy." I was simply trying to show a circumstance with more contrast in which someone felt they had suffered something more personal as a direct result. In some cases, it would be possible to be damaging to the individiual's reputation and therefore impact their business or personal life. This is a clear infringement of their rights that someone else stole their image and unlawfully used it for marketing purposes without prior consent, but the woman in this particular case wasn't slighted as badly as she admits the possibilities are. It begs the question of what could happen with other such abuses of information. I am pleased that this woman has made it off relatively unscathed while I am scared for the doors it may open and abuses we aren't even aware of.
Don't sue them. Give them permission.
How cool is it to have your family shown in Prague? As noted it's not for unseemly use, and it's some small grocer just trying to get by.
Don't make him go to the expense (and waste) of having to print a new poster.
Instead, do the adult thing - accept the apology and let him keep using the image officially until he moves on. Everyone wins.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've read about this over a week ago and it's very strange: There's no way anyone can take a 600px wide pic and blow it up to 1-2 m. 2m is about 80 inches; so that picture would have to be printed at 7.62 dpi (ppi would be more accurate). No way.
The only way that pic could have been used is if the ad people had access to the original file, which is assumed to be a hi-res picture from a dSLR. How could that happen? I see a few possibilities:
To keep things in perspective, copyright is mostly respected in all Central and East Europe - it's not like it's a jungle. Stock images from sites like iStock are very cheap and of good quality. A 12-15 Mp file costs $20 at iStock, that's nothing when you have a paying customer. There's no NEED for anyone to steal the pic.
Course of action: contact the grocery store, find out who made their ad. Contact the ad agency. If they got the file legitimately, they will have no issue cooperating. If the file was from a stock agency, contact them and they will resolve the issue. If the ad agency cannot provide and proof, get a lawyer, threaten to sue but look for a settlement; a trial would be long a costly.
Disclosure: I am an exclusive contributor to iStock myself and I live in another Central European country.
The problem is commercial usage.
As I mentioned in another post, I am an exclusive contributor to iStock. I once made a session with a girl (over 18), very simple and decent stuff - business-like clothing and setting. She did sign a model release and was perfectly happy with it. But when her mother found out, I got a phone call -- she did not agree to her daughter's actions and that she was concerned about how some might use her pictures. I tried to explain to her that iStock's TOS disallow any pornographic or sensitive usage (including 'edorsement' and such) but she was still upset. I did not want to cause any problems, so I deleted all pictures and tore up the model release. Since I'm a parent myself, I can understand how other parents tend to be (over)protective.
BTW, if you think about doing pro/semi-pro shoots with a model, have a read.
Let's see overblown fear of pedophiles, latent xenophobia (that "especially in another country" is very telling)
Let me guess...
Are you perhaps British?
Outside of Anglo-Saxon culture people are a lot less freaked out by this stuff. You guys and kids are a lot like the muslims with the Mohammed cartoons. Irrational to the core.
Similar thing happened here a while back, the kids at one of the international schools had class photos taken. A few months later, one of the dads is browsing factory catalogs, and lo and behold it's a picture of his kid and a lot of her friends decorating the pages. Evidently, the Chinese administrators had given the pictures to the factory due to a guanxi relationship. None of them could understand why the parents were upset - they just used the pictures, no harm no foul. Why, did you want some money for it? Intellecutal property is a cultural concept, and people in China just don't understand why they shouldn't be able to copy something as long as nobody has been physically deprived.
I also "borrow" material from the internet for printing. Guess what, it's not front-page news. Everyone does it, and I'm sure I've published someone's vacation photo before. I try to use public domain images, but if they're not forthcoming then I've got a deadline to meet. Online repositories are a crapshoot, and my 300+ CDs of stock photos lack in entire categories - I've got three CDs of pictures of trucks and roads, and one photo of an airliner which I used a long time ago.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Nintendo might have something to say about this:
http://karhuton.com/tmp/marco-pasta.jpg
The product was made somewhere in Eastern Europe and sold atleast in Finland.
The truth of the matter is that if you make something available on the Internet, it is there for the taking. If you make something in digital form and someone else makes it available on the Internet, again it is just there. Once it is out there, all control is lost.
There used to be these things like ethics, copyright and common decency. They are pretty much gone now. If I find your picture and I want to use it in some way, I can and there is very, very little you can do about it. You might try suing - but if an international border is crossed you will find it very, very expensive to do so. You will find many countries take the attitude that Americans have no business involving themselves in their country - go away and take your silly attitudes with you. Americans are there to be abused in any way possible.
So of you leave yourself open to being abused, you will not be disappointed.
Sometimes people just assume that if it is on the Internet, it is free to be used. They are pretty much right. It's like music - it used to have to be paid for. Today, it is just there.
Rule 1 is pretty clear. Don't put stuff on the Internet that you weren't intending others to have. And by "others" we really mean the entire planet.
Rule 2 is if you were thinking your digital information has value, you were wrong. At least after someone posted it on the Internet. And once it is there, it is there forever.