Copyright Infringement! UK pic appearing on US website

It is something that I have not come across before with my images outside the UK, so advice and help would be greatly appreciated.

I sold four pictures to two of the national papers in the UK on an exclusive deal, that only the two of them could use them. The pictures appeared on there web sites the same day that they were in print, thursday 11th. I have since sold them to other media outlets throughout the world, after negotiating price and terms of use.

This morning I have found my image being used by a US web site, Free Republic, and I believe that the image has been taken from one of the National Newspapers web sites in the UK, as it is accompanied with another image which belongs to this newspaper. There is nothing on the web page to say that the images are copyrigted, and after downloading the image and checking the file info, it has all been removed from the image, and the image name has been slightly altered from the original on the papers web site. There is a brief sentence which states which paper the story was from but thats it.

On the papers web site it clearly states that no images are to be used without prior authority and should someone wish to use them they need to contact the papers syndication office with a clear link to this department.

I have saved a copy of the web page just in case it's removed!

Where do I stand, should I pursue the web site myself or contact the newspaper and let them take the action?

Cheers for any help that I can get on this

Rob

You should stand OK. The pic is yours, and so is the copyright, so YOU are the one who needs to pursue the infringer, not the newspaper you sold the image to.

Best of luck on it

Mark H

I would email the admin of the site before doing anything else. If they take it down, good deal. If they refuse to take down the site, you can either deal with it or take legal action. If you decide to take legal action, you might want to pay to register your images (including the one being used without permission) with the US copyright office.

Because the infringement is occurring in the United States, you are able to take advantage of US law despite being a citizen of the UK. In your claim (or when you ask them to take the offending image down), you may want to take advantage of the fact that the site removed your copyright info from the image information. There is apparently $500,000 in statutory (i.e., non-discretionary) damages for the removal of certain copyright information (and you seem to be describing one type) under the DMCA. Just check out the link in the $1M+ USD judgment thread in this forum.

In any event, you have a great case to have them remove the offending image. And if they don't, you appear to have a good case from a legal standpoint if you chose to go down that road.

It is possible that a poster has hyperlinked to the picture or the poster downloaded to an online gallery then posted a link. I believe that site is a discussion forum and they do not sell anything. I bet if you sent a simple email to the admin they would handle it for you.

Lastly, how did you find your photo being used by someone else? Is there a special program you have to search for this?

Good Luck

I'd just fire off a polite email to the website admins - I'm sure they'll remove it. Legal action wouldn't really be advisable here - it's not a commercial company and I doubt they are profiting off your image in any way.

edit: That website is filled with hate - if you want to sue them, feel free. I'll even donate £10!

Firstly thanks for all of you're comments everyone and it's really good to get your help on this one......

Since my first posting I have found several more web sites using my image, some have copied the image, I presume "save picture as" and then hosted them on there "free picture hosting site" others are hosting them on there own server i believe as there is no hyperlink on the image properties as it appears, to another hosting site. Either way it's not good practice to do what they are doing and with the continued attitude of Media outlets throughout the world wanting everything for free, I'm not suprised

I did have one amusing phone call from an Irish TV Station, one of there biggest! who wanted the picture for one of there programs and expected full usage of it at any time and of course were not going to pay me for it's use............... They could not believe it when I said NO...............

I found the images by using Google and Yahoo search, it's best to use more than one search engine, and I don't use the image search function, as most people that do "copy" images will change the image name anyway. Then I used the main words associated with the story of the image, and thats how I found these web sites.

I will be contacting the relevant web sites later today, re everyones comments on what I should do and I'll let you know how I get on........

Thanks again it's very much appreciated and I will post the picture up here later on in the week

Rob