DKNY Caught Using Photographer's Images Without Permission Or Compensation

Good story

http://gothamist.com …ographers_image​s_with.php

New York street photographer Brandon Stanton, who runs the Humans of New York site, was approached by DKNY a few months ago for the purchase of 300 of his photos. The company wanted to use the images in their store windows all over the world, and offered Stanton $15,000 for them. Even though Stanton declined the offer, the company has been using his photos anyway... for free. Stanton found this out when a fan sent him photos from a DKNY store in Bangkok. He says, "The window is full of my photos. These photos were used without my knowledge, and without compensation."

Stanton explains why he turned down the $15,000 in the first place: "A friend in the industry told me that $50 per photo was not nearly enough to receive from a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. So I asked for more money. They said 'no.'" Stanton declined to comment on how much he upped his price to when we asked him this morning. However, street photographer and Gothamist publisher Jake Dobkin has experience with these types of deals, and tell us, "I made $900 for a full wall at the Louvre [at a retail space in the museum], and that was only after the guy who wrote the book threatened to sue them for running it without asking. The fair value was probably about $2,500 or $3,000."
While they are using his photos in other countries, Stanton says he hasn't seen his images in his hometown of New York, noting, "They have similar collages, but without my photos. I imagine that my photos were only used in stores that they thought I would never see."
Stanton told us this morning, "I just want to emphasize that I am not looking for personal compensation and have no interest in litigation. All I want is for them to make a $100,000 donation to the Bedford-Stuyvesant YMCA. It is my local YMCA and I've seen firsthand that it makes a big difference in the community. I think the money would help a lot of kids go to summer camp."
We've reached out to DKNY for comment, and will update if we hear back.

hope he gets the donation

$25,000 donated..

shep207 wrote in post #15651790
$25,000 donated..

They got off cheaply there. If the copyright was registered they could have been looking at penalties of that much per image.

Plus of course that only gets them off the hook with the photographer. Unless they went out and found all the people featured in the photos and got their permission they have infringed those people's image rights and could be sued by all of them.

Nothing good comes from the bureaucracy of the YMCA... Shame he didnt donate it to.... AIDs research or cancer research. That would have been something to talk about.

pyrojim wrote in post #15652103
Nothing good comes from the bureaucracy of the YMCA... Shame he didnt donate it to.... AIDs research or cancer research. That would have been something to talk about.

I think it was great to give the money to his local ymca, at least it makes a difference to his community! Just a little knowledge the US/Private/Corporate donated 6.9 billion dollars on aids/hiv for FY2010... THATS JUST ONE YEAR! Combined Total donations for cancer research is 4 trillion dollars. And yet we barely have cures. But we sure do have alot of pharmaceuticals made with the money.