copyright of pictures

[cookey]

Hi,

I am asking about copyright of pictures & usage by a third party without permission..

I have a friend who works freelancing for magazines & websites in the philippines.

On the weekend he covered 2 beauty pageants.There are mainly 2 competing websites who covered these events.

My friend was paid for one of the websites for the weekends works & took over 750 images.He burnt the images onto discs & gave a copy of the images to the web site who paid him plus a copy of pictures to the sponsers which were the hotels where the events were held which was part of the agreement where they use the images for their website & advertising.

Now one of the employees copied the discs & gave them to the rival website & they have posted the images & watermarked them with their logo.They had their own photographer but he must have mucked up the shots as his were not published.They never renamed the images as you click on exif data/properties you can get all the info.

Now they have been asked politely by the resorts who were sponsors & the owner of the website who paid for the images to remove the images.48 hours later they were not removed.

My friend said he will see an attorney on Monday.

Where does he stand in this situation.They wont communicate with him & rebuff suggestions of payment for the pictures or acknowledge he is the photographer.

Any advice appreciated.

[PhotosGuy]

They never renamed the images as you click on exif data/properties you can get all the info. That's good. Did he also put a © notice anywhere on them? (Not that he had to.) He'll probably win, but the amount depends on whether he also registers/registered them.

Ten Copyright Myths That Can Hurt You
http://blog.sessions.edu/legal-copyright-trademark/ten-copyright-myths-that-can-hurt-you/

how do you register your images (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=430578)

More from copyright law from ASMP, EP, and APA.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=2966371

Australia: Alliance Online advice
http://www.alliance.org.au/docman/task,cat_view/gid,7/limit,6/limitstart,12/

Australian Copyright Council links:
http://www.copyright.org.au/

[cookey]

thanks for the info,he is going to register his pics Tuesday.They still have not pulled the pics down either.I think this will turn nasty now.

[amfoto1]

Now, I ain't no attorney, but here's what I think will happen.

The attorney will send a letter informing them they must remove the photos or pay licensing fees. Your friend will need to pay the attorney but might be able to recover those costs later.

Most likely, the violator will remove them and that will be the end of it, although your friend may be able to collect something for the time they continued to display the photos after he informed them they were not licensed to publish the images, that he owned the copyright and requested they remove them from their site.

If they still don't take them down, or he wants to try to get paid for whatever time they remained up, the next step is probably to go to court and get a judgment collecting the fees. More attorneys fees, though, I'm afraid.

Since the photos were published before the copyright was registered, probably all your friend can collect is usage fees, not damages (which might be 10X usage fees or more). Only if copyright is registered before they have been published in any way (including display on a website, such as the one that paid him to take the photos) can the greater damages amount be awarded.

There does not need to be a copyright mark on the photo itself. His name and copyright are contained in the EXIF data. Even if that weren't there, he still has the originals and can prove he took the images and the copyright is his, so it's not a point the violator can really contest in any way.

The fact that they burned their watermark into his images should be good for something, but probably is not.

The owner of the website might have paid the hotel employee who copied the disk, thinking he had taken the photos or otherwise had some right to them. Or, they might be complicit in that they knew exactly who took the photos and that they were infringing on a copyright by publishing them. (It's a fine point, but if they published the images first, there still might be basis for a damages suit, which they sort of deserve.)

The hotel might want to consider punitive action against the employee who burned the disk. What he was theft. Not sure I'd want an employee like that working for me.

A friend of mine had a similar thing happen. He went into a restaurant and was stopped in his tracks when he saw a big enlargement of one of his photos hanging on the wall. He asked about it and found out who sold it to the restaurant. Turned out it was an employee of the photo lab that processed his film. As soon as the lab became aware of this and verified it, the lab employee was fired immediately.

The restaurant was not really at fault, since they didn't know the seller had stolen the image. They wanted to continue to display the image, so paid my friend the same fees they'd paid the lab employee. I don't know if they ever were able to collect back the monies back from the lab employee, so the restaurant might have ended up paying twice for the image!

[cookey]

The owner of the other site knew the photographer as he had asked him to do work for him before.The owner of the site knew exactly who the pictures belonged to as he was standing next to my friend when taking the pictures.

[Floriantrojer.com]

Only if copyright is registered before they have been published in any way (including display on a website, such as the one that paid him to take the photos) can the greater damages amount be awarded.


That is not true, at least over here.

!!!!!Make sure you have proof that they used the images!!!!!!

Take screenshots of all pages, print those and save those. Make sure you can see they have THEIR watermark on his pics. Make sure to retain proof of everything they used. The more the merrier for your friend!

Even if they pull the photos from their website after an attorney contacted them, you can still claim a fee for the unauthorized usage, and if it's only to cover the attorney fees and get a few bucks extra!

Btw, if they somewhere on the website state that the copyright of the photos is THEIRS - even better for you. That's theft in the most simple way.

Should be easy going in case your friend goes to court.

[amfoto1]

That is not true, at least over here.



You're right. I just did a little research and found out that statutory damages might still apply, so long as the copyright of images are registered within three months of the first publication. It sounds like those damages can be $750 to $40,000 per infringement, so it might be worthwhile, especially if a number of images were ripped off. Like I said, I ain't no lawer! ;-)

I agree, document the heck out of it.

But, even if the images have disappeared from the website before you get a chance to, you might still be able to see previous versions of the pages on the "Wayback Machine". Just Google for that and follow the instructions how to use it to see previous versions of a web pages.