MY IMAGE STOLEN AND USED IN AN ONLINE NEWSPAPER! what do I do?

[Danielle10]

Look at this I am mortified!!!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cri...k-England.html

what do I do??? Is there anything I can do??

I did have this message sent to me on fb the other day:

hi Danielle...I work for a newspaper in London and we would like to do a piece about Monty Panesar being picked for the England Test squad and we'd like to use your pic of him with the Mike Whitney Band....would that be OK....??
also you wouldn't have any of him singing would you..?/
any help much appreciated..Many thanks..Jack

[98kellrs]

What do you want done? Do you want them to pay for it, do you want to be creditted for the image or do you want it removed from the site?

[William]

Tell them they have breached Copyright, And is now in the hands of your Lawyer , Jack should have asked first

[magrose]

So they acknowledged Reuters and Getty but not yours. Pretty poor.

[ricktas]

Send them a demand for £2000.00 saying they breached your copyright. The DailyMail is a big newspaper with a massive readership. Take screen grabs etc, so that if they remove it, you have proof it was there.

[Xenedis]

Do what I did when some company in the US decided to use one of my images in an unauthorised manner on its site.

The email I sent:

Hello.

It has come to my attention that your company has used one of my images as a promotional image on your Web site without my permission.

The image in question is the following:

<URL removed>

Linked from this page:

<URL removed>

I am the original photographer of that image.

Please remove this image from your site. I did not authorise its use, and it is not intended for commercial use.

Failure to remove the image within 72 hours will result in an invoice of $AU 5,000 for the use of my image.

Thank you.

The reply I received less than 24 hours later:

Hello,

We apologize for the unauthorized use of your photo. Thank you for
bringing it to our attention.

I have removed it from our blog post:
<URL removed>

Sincerely,

<name removed>
Director of Content Development
<company name removed>

Perhaps invoices scare people more than lawyers do.

[Mark L]

They knew what they were doing. They cropped out you're copyright watermark. Grubs.
As Rick said, "Take screen grabs etc, so that if they remove it, you have proof it was there."
Then you have time to contemplate what action to take.

[ElectricImages]

The Daily Mail is a particularly nasty, unethical and unscrupulous newspaper. Because of this, I would send an invoice for a couple of thousand pounds and a demand for payment. If it were another paper I might suggest otherwise, but frankly, in this case, the Daily Mail deserves any kind of walloping anyone can dish to them.

[Wayne]

If they have cropped out your watermark and then used it, that right there proves intent. The Getty and Reuters acknowledgements are there because they;

A) Probably paid for those images and it is a condition of use that the watermarks stay
B) Know the relationship would be soured if they removed the watermarks and it may have lasting effect on their ability to get images going forward

Where was it taken from? Flickr?

[peterb666]

It is a pretty low trick to take an image and crop out the identification mark, that is nothing other than outright theft.

[Xenedis]

It is a pretty low trick to take an image and crop out the identification mark, that is nothing other than outright theft.

Not to downplay Danielle's situation, but it's actually not theft; it's copyright infringement, an altogether different concept in terms of what happens, as well as the criminal vs. civil liability associated with it.

I certainly agree with you that it is a very low act.

[Danielle10]

Well I have emailed them with some help from a friend who knows this stuff, so will see what happens.
I suppose I should be flattered that they took my image lol. Gotta look on the bright side ey?

[Xenedis]

Well I have emailed them with some help from a friend who knows this stuff, so will see what happens.
I suppose I should be flattered that they took my image lol. Gotta look on the bright side ey?

I hope you achieve a satisfactory outcome.

It certainly is confronting to see your image used in an unauthorised manner, especially when done commercially.

In my case, I've had my images used in an unauthorised manner on three occasions (that I knew about).

On the first occasion, I had the site wiped off the grid.

On the second, the offender was some kid who didn't know it wasn't right to do what he did, and he removed the image.

The third case was the example I mentioned earlier in this thread.

I have no doubt whatsoever that my images have been used in an unauthorised manner on many more occasions, but the Internet is a big place and I cannot chase down all of the offenders.

From my limited experience, mentioning the Copyright Act 1968, establishing yourself as the copyright holder and mentioning invoices have all been effective methods.

Just do yourself a favour and don't mention lawyers or legal action. The reality is that legal action is extremely expensive and time-consuming (and thus unapproachable for most of us) and won't be taken seriously by anyone unless a letterhead from a solicitor actually arrives, and for that to have happened you'd need to have invested money on something that may be a lost cause, whereby the cure is worse than the disease.

[peterb666]

Not to downplay Danielle's situation, but it's actually not theft; it's copyright infringement, an altogether different concept in terms of what happens, as well as the criminal vs. civil liability associated with it.

I certainly agree with you that it is a very low act.

Copyright infringement IS theft. It is taking the intellectual (and in this case also the artistic) property of someone else and using it without their permission. In this instance it involves defacing the image to cover up the crime, like repainting a stolen car.

[Kym]

Now they have acknowledged the theft send the invoice.

[fillum]

I am not a lawyer yada yada...

I think a key factor here is the "uniqueness" of your image, an image that has given them their angle for the story (it pretty much is the story). In contrast, the Reuters/Getty images would probably be not much different to loads of others which have been widely seen before.

I'd be chasing them pretty hard. Good luck with it...


Cheers.

[kiwi]

Xenedis, your situation where you asked them to withdraw the image, wouldn't it have been better just to send them an invoice with the letter and say "you have used my image without permission, here is my invoice" - seems all they had to do was remove it and they didnt pay you compensation ?

[mongo]

Mongo does not understand the stupidity of someone asking you for permission and then proceeding regardless of the answer (or in this case , no answer i.e no permission). Perhaps, in this case, it could be seen an intentional act to use your material regardless of permission. Certainly, not waiting for written permission or otherwise and the removal of your copyright mark are strong evidence of this.

Mongo agrees that the whole story is propped up by your image – the other images are very peripheral at best. Newspapers Publishers make profit from selling newspapers – that is their goal. Mongo would think that a breach of copyright (which this appears to be) might give rise to an action for injunction (if the breach is ongoing) and or civil damages. It is unlikely an injunction would be granted where monetary damages are capable of satisfying the breach.

Not suggesting you do any of this stuff. However, in short, you may very well be entitled to more than a mere acknowledgement or apology. You may be entitled to a share of the profits by seeking the correct monetary compensation i.e the worth of the use of your photo to them.

Additionally, the big newspaper “news of the World” enquiry and fallout from that is under way in Britain. This is just another example of unethical practices that you might bring to the attention of the relevant Minister over there. This may in turn place more measurable pressure on these people to do the right thing to avoid further unwanted scrutiny on their part at this time and simply pay you what they should have.

[kiwi]

Few things I'm also interested in

where did Danielle state she used a watermark ?
where was he source image originally sourced from ?
was the metadata intact ?

[peterb666]

Few things I'm also interested in

where did Danielle state she used a watermark ?
where was he source image originally sourced from ?
was the metadata intact ?

The original image was placed on facebook and contains Danielle's signature. That has been cropped off the bottom of the image.

Danielle got a message on facebook requesting use of the image - see original post. Without reply, the image was taken, altered, used without credit to the photographer and without consent or payment.