Thursday, February 23, 2012

Pictures used without permission by El Mundo

A lion in winter by Teacher Dude's BBQ
A lion in winter, a photo by Teacher Dude's BBQ on Flickr.
Yesterday I received an email asking me to look at an article in the print edition of  the Spanish Daily El Mundo about the legendary Greek freedom fighter, Manolis Glezos, written by Greek journalist, Theodoris Georgakopoulos (See link to the journalist's site here)

It came as quite a surprise to see a picture I took in April 2008 was being used by the paper to illustrate the article.

The picture which appears on my Flickr page and on this blog is covered by various licences and is therefore not freely available. In the case of this blog images are covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License. which allows activists and bloggers to use the pictures but requires commercial users to ask permission.

As I am not a professional photographer I am not really an expert on different aspects of copyright, however,El Mundo did not contact me in order to ask permission to use the photograph. As people who follow this blog are aware times are especially tough in Greece and like so many others my income has been drastically reduced over the last couple of years. When you see a large commercial operation unwilling to pay even a token fee for your work, it sticks in your throat. 

6 comments:

Ariadne said...

Ask them to pay for your photo!
One of my sea glass photos was used by a writer in the States. She asked for permission and sent me two copies of the book when it was published. And I neither had copyright on my photo nor am I a pro photographer!So go for them. Write them an e-mail asking to be paid for the photo!AriadnefromGreece!

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine has a photo of him being used in a Guardian guide. After he contact them they apologised and paid him 300 pounds, please not that his photo was much smaller and it was used in a supplement and not the main newspaper. It is probably best to contact Georgakopoulos through his twitter account in order to verify if he or the paper is responsible for the unlawful use of your paper and then contact the paper in order to receive payment and a correction.

teacher dude said...

Thank you both for the comments and the advice, I'll be looking into this.

Okok said...

Hi! please follow me on twitter (@okokitsme) so I can send you a DM. I'm working on this with @tinaletina. Got this article translated into Spanish here http://okokitsme.titanpad.com/teacherdude We could use the pad also to discuss a couple of things in English, the three of us (Tina, you and I) to get this going!

sibadd said...

But TeacherDude what do you think of ACTA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a multinational treaty for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual propertyrights enforcement. The agreement aims to establish an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet, and would create a new governing body outside existing forums, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, or the United Nations.

http://www.stopacta.info/

http://youtu.be/TVVmu_bCF0M

Simon

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