When You Find A Picture Taken by You ...

mridula

I need your advice. Yesterday I took a flight from Delhi to Bangalore. I picked up the flight magazine (December Issue). I found that in their feature article they have taken a picture of mine with a credit to someone else and of course without my permission. I am mad. Has anyone faced something like this? What should I do? I am very sure the picture is mine because the cloud formation in both the pictures and the position of the ropeway is exactly the same.

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Mridula

Travel Tales from India

hrishim

Sometimes the magazine editor maybe unaware that the content was copyrighted. The photographer who sold it to them may have lied. So you can write to them and complain.

Sadly I think there is little else you can do.

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mridula

Hrishim, thanks a lot for the reply. I have been getting the same advice from many. Let me see what they have to say.

Sama

you can first contact them and make sure you can prove it's your photo. your other alternative is to contact a lawyer.

I had to do that when a yoga studio was using words from my website -- word for word, an exact copy -- to advertise one of their classes. they changed the wording after I contacted them but my lawyer was ready to send them a "cease and desist" letter.

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mridula

Yoga, that picture comes on the first page on Google image search so my feeling is that is how it got pinched. I am anyway writer or take pictures for pleasure and upload on the net. Everywhere it appears on the net it falls under my name, I have a full version of it, origional copy.

But not sure about the lawyer part, and this is India but this one of the big airlines. And it feels bad to see my stuff credited to someone else! I have written to them now. Let us see if I hear from them. This being the end of the year I guess they will take there own time to reply.

manojb

If you are just mad, write to the editor, complain, and ask for a correction. If you are really mad, write to a newspaper or get a newspaper interested. If you are hopping mad, sue them for damages. This would require some out of pocket expenses for hiring the lawyer, etc. recoverable if you win the case. Other options are free.

mridula

Manoj thanks a lot for listing the options so nicely. I have done step one and complained to the company. Let us see how they respond. from there I would think of going to step two.

Nick-H

If you can get them to listen to you, it is important that you find out how they got the picture.

The may have been sold it by a photographer claiming that it is his, or they may very likely have got it from an agency. The agency may or may not be aware of the wrongful attribution, they may have been conned too.

But if it is with an agency you want them to take it off their books, or to attribute it correctly.

You certainly don't want them selling it to anyone else!

Bottom line is that seems to be very little respect for copyright in india. The free-for-all attitude of internet users has just made this more so. Very many people wrongly believe that if something is on the internet, it is in public ownership. Some even think that justifies them putting their own name on it

(hrishim... everybody owns the copyright in their own creation, regardless,)

mridula: Congratulations on getting your picture published!

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dzibead

Incorrect. You can sue. I know, I know: "this is India, lawsuits take forever, blah, blah." Plus, lawsuits are expensive, etc., etc. But if this is a large airline with an international reputation that they don't want sullied, and if at least arguably there's international distribution of the magazine, you may be able either to shame them into doing the right thing, or to invoke the law of some other jurisdiction to protect your rights.

There's more than one lawyer on IndiaMike (ahem ... like me) and maybe someone would be willing to jump in to a write a letter on your behalf, or to help you locate an Indian lawyer, particularly one with some intellectual property expertise (and there's one IM member I'm thinking of who, I believe, fits the bill). PM me.

And Nick's advice re: seeing if the source of this photo was an agency or some outfit selling "stock photos" is good. In any event, contact the airline immediately and put them on notice of the problem.

Nick-H

I'd be non-combative in my initial approach.

I doubt very much that they are aware of the copyright theft.

machadinha

<Cross-posting, and haven't studied the thread in detail>

Hm. I may be back on this. I've pursued this in my country, but I had a union to back me up & pay for legal expenses. Basically, an impressive-looking letter by a not-half-assed lawyer was all it took. But it will depend on geographical intricacies and so on.

For now, I'd advise you to contact PEN, they may be able to at least give you some further pointers or contacts. They're about text btw, but it shouldn't matter.

I agree btw, an exploratory and courteous-but-firm first letter would be a good start. If they bite (and they well may; any decent magazine with any stakes will not want this trouble), it saves you a lot of trouble.

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capt_mahajan

manojb puts it well.

Agree with Dzibead about a large setup not wanting to damage their reputation, but may not always work in India. I had to threaten to damage a large airlines airport office in Delhi to get compensated for lost international flight baggage. (delayed by a few days, but nobody knew that then).. they weren't bothered about their reputation.

Polite letter (maybe they will, in return politeness, admit to a mistake, which would be good either way), then examine your options, seems a good start.

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dzibead

A further thought: let's not rule out the possibility that the photo wasn't sold to the airline by an outside photographer and passed of as his/her own work, or obtained from an agency, but was "lifted" directly off the Internet by someone "in-house" on the magazine's staff.

If that was the case (and if the magazine approves of this kind of practice!), then their editorial practices need to be cleaned up immediately. I suspect they don't approve of this, however, and would frown on a staff person who did it. If that's what happened, the staff member may be more ignorant (and lazy) than malicious, but I suspect the airline would appreciate being alerted to the problem, because there's a risk that a staff member who would do this kind of thing might cause a more serious problem in the future.

karuna

In my experience airlines are pretty dreadful when it comes to complaints anywhere in the world. Large companies will be worried if you make it into the press, but not otherwise, I think.

machadinha

<cross-posting again>

ps Yes, agree with all the above. And don't forget it's just about 1 picture, not even from a professional I take it; an editor's correction note in their next edition is probably as good as it gets. I wouldn't go in for massive damage claims.