Are Flickr Images Abused By Foreign Businesses?

eldavojohn writes "My friend Drew was notified via Twitter that one of his Flickr images had been selected as poster child for freeloaders who abuse the benefits system in an Elsevier news story in the Netherlands. The original image clearly gives an CC BY-NC 2.0 license to the image which doesn't appear in the story — a story which generates revenue for Elsevier. My friend doesn't speak Dutch so he's a little confused about what, if anything, he can do in this situation. I'm reminded of a family's Christmas photo showing up on a billboard in Prague and I wonder if photo sharing sites are treated as free to abuse regardless of copyright by foreign businesses? Has anyone else heard of this sort of thing happening with images from social photo sharing sites?"

Comments

How can you be a freeloader?

[Anonymous Coward]

When information wants to be free?

Re:How can you be a freeloader?

[hedwards]

I think the issue is that it's corporations that want you to have to pay for everything, but the same corporations don't seem to have any problem ripping somebody off for their work. It's one thing to pirate other people's work if you provide yours for free to all comers, but quite another if you're suing to enforce your rights while ripping off other parties.

Plus, a lot of those people saying that would pirate whether or not there was any moral justification for it.

Re:How can you be a freeloader?

[kmdrtako]

It's one thing to pirate other people's work if you provide yours for free to all comers

Actually it's not okay to pirate anyone else's work, whether you provide yours for free or not.

Re:How can you be a freeloader?

[budgenator]

A blogger that I follow, Michael Yon has quite a problem with people stealing his work, even people who should know better such as Michael Moore (yes the movie producer Michael Moore and I've seen the theft of rights with my own eyes) has stolen his work. In one thread a poster recommended a reverse search engine Tineye, to find photographic copyright violators on the web. You just upload an image or the URL of an online image and TinEye searches its web repository for copies or near copies of the image, Now an average Joe can keep tabs on who and for what his or her photograph are being used for, and if desired put a stop to there illegal use.

Simply email them!

[Xiph1980]

About every dutch person speaks English, so just write them an email saying you own the copyright to that image and would like to be payed a _reasonable_ amount for the usage of your photo. The Netherlands isn't some backwash country where they don't respect copyright. We don't always respect patents, when it comes to software patents, but we do with copyright, although not with the same absurd duration. Also, Elsevier is a politically right-wing magazine, and although I don't know their specific view on copyright, the political right tend to favor longer and stricter copyright terms. Perhaps that could be an advantage here. Also, don't start threatening with any legal action in the first email. That'll only incite a counter-attack. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all.

CC is a shitty license for photography

[jedrek]

Generally speaking, Creative Commons is a fine license for most sorts of creative output for one simple reason: piggybacking. If you make music, you can use somebody's CC'd vocals in your track, they can use your drum loops or guitar riffs. In writing, you can use somebody else's characters, somebody else can use the world you've created. And so on.

For photography, it sucks. The photographer gets nothing out of it. They produce, but there's no reciprocation. Your photos get used by other people, sometimes they'll do something cool with it (I've had some of my stuff used as the basis for illustrations) but usually it's to illustrate some bullshit article on some crap blog. This is where the bigger problem with CC comes into play: your work gets tied to people who use it.

If I take a picture of a dog biting a dark skinned man and release it with a CC license, it can get legally picked up by a neo-nazi site/magazine, printed and credited to my name. Not only do people whose politics I find to be morally repugnant get to use my work, they get to tie me to their publication. Boned. Think that's unlikely? How about this example, where a french girl's self-portrait was used to illustrate an article about a lawsuit involving hotel pool sperm.

CC licenses have been enforced already in .NL

[paulproteus]

Just so you know, five years ago, a Dutch judge ruled that Creative Commons licenses are enforceable. See here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5823 . This is the Adam Curry case from 2006, for those who follow the history of such things. There was also a later scenario in 2009 that he also won.

Summary from the Wikipedia article:

In late February 2006, Adam sued the Dutch tabloid Weekend for reprinting photos from his Flickr page and publishing details about his daughter. The photos were released under a version of the Creative Commons license that forbids commercial use and requires acknowledgement, but the tabloid printed a few of them without contacting Curry.

The verdict of the lawsuit did not award Curry any damages, but did forbid the tabloid from reprinting the photos in the future, and set a fine of 1,000€ for each subsequent violation by the tabloid. It was one of the first times the license was tested in a court.

In May 2009, Curry posted on his blog information about a different Dutch tabloid publishing another Creative Commons licenced photo from Curry's Flickr account and Curry's attempt to apply Creative Commons license requirements. The publisher settled without a trial on Curry's terms.

Foreigners? How about BoingBoing and others?

[cornicefire]

Foreign? It's not just foreign. I see it happen at American sites all of the time. Heck, BoingBoing is both one of the biggest fans of Creative Commons licenses and one of the biggest abusers. They always post the CC license link prominently when it allows copying, but when it doesn't they just post the image anyways. And they're about as commercial as a website gets charging some of the heaviest ad rates around. ($20 CPM.) They reportedly raked in more than $1 million in 2006. (http://blogbuildingu.com/articles/making-money-blogging-profiles-of-6-very-successful-blogs)

There's a reason why their masthead lists two lawyers but no staff photographers. They would rather pay the lawyers to spew squid ink about fair use than to pay anything to the people who contribute the art. This attitude, of course, is not unique to this site. A number of sites do it.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/04/george-bernard-shaws.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/06/startups-of-londons.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/ol-space-food/

Re:your friend still has the copyright

[kwark]

Maybe he should start by contacting Elsevier/Reed Business: http://www.reedbusiness.nl/contact/voorwaarden/gebruiksvoorwaarden/index.cfm?articles_id=29A897BD-9E7D-451E-BD73-4229943FB264

The bottom of the page roughly translates to:
We respect I.P. If you suspect your rights are being infringed, we request that you send us the following information:
-postal address, telephone number and email address
-description of the infringed work
-description of the place you found said work
-statement why you think said work is being infringed upon
-statement that the above information is correct and you are the rightful owner or are empowered by the owner to act upon his behalf
-sign the above letter and include a copy of an identity card

Send this to:
Reed Business bv
Afdeling Juridische Zaken
Postbus 4
7000 BA Doetinchem
The Netherlands

Flickr's recommendation

[ILuvRamen]

Flickr just announced its list of ways to counteract foreign photo stealing for stock photo-like purposes:
1. be really ugly
2. have a cheap, crappy camera
3. just take really bad, crooked, blurry shots
4. Photoshop a cheesy top hat, moustache, and monacle onto all your photos

It looks like a lot of folks on Flickr have already implemented these security measures.