Has my photo been illegally used?

Do you have a record of your request to cancel your istock account?

Keep us posted. I'd still like to know where they did get the photo and hear their response upon learning it was taken with a Canon.

blackshadow wrote in post #5330821
Do you have a record of your request to cancel your istock account?

Depending on when the shot was purchased and when the request went in, it may not matter. I would guess the lead time on putting together the ad campaign was longer than two months, and the OP was guessing he put the request in two months ago.

That's a bummer, its had 32 downloads, so that's 32 RF licences at between $1:50 and $15:50 in our money (depending on size) to istockphoto. What percentage of that do you get?

I ran it through the price calculator at Alamy to see what its worth. From the numbers on this thread, 1/8 page inside the magazine is USD$370 for a circulation of up to 2 million and USD$400.00 if the circulation is 5 million for a single use rights managed licence. photographer's cut is 60%

aepoc wrote in post #5329828
I just realized something...

It's possible that Nikon got my photo from iStock. I completely forgot about it, for a very long time. About two months ago I contacted them requesting to cancel my account (which they still haven't gotten back to me on). Dammit. I need to see how Nikon got my photo, but I'm pretty sure that iStock will be the answer. As if I wasn't done with iStock before.

Is there any reason you can't just delete the images you have there?

There may be a way to do that jb, I'm trying to figure it out. I have also contacted iStock about this again. I won't get burned again.

Ouch - this is one reason i wouldnt put my stuff on microstock - $15 instead of $370 is a big leap.

Think i would rather wait 6 months for 1 download at the higher price than have 32 downloads at cents each!

neilwood32 wrote in post #5332432
Ouch - this is one reason i wouldnt put my stuff on microstock - $15 instead of $370 is a big leap.

Think i would rather wait 6 months for 1 download at the higher price than have 32 downloads at cents each!

That's all with the assumption that there would have been a purchase at prices other than microstock prices. The OP has some quality shots, and shots that would merit better than microstock prices, but if that's all the consumer (the ad company) was willing to pay, they wouldn't have gone looking for his picture elsewhere to pay more. They would have purchased something else available at the lower price point.

For the copyright lawyers in the crowd, my understanding is that if this had been used illegally but the image had not been registered with the copyright office all the OP would have been able to sue for is the $400 or so normal magazine rate but if he had taken the time to register it, he would be entitled to sue for a kind of punitive damages, is that correct?

Personally I don't bother but it's definitely something to consider for those of you who are concerned about your image rights being violated or whom actually make money with photos...

Also, one thing I didnt see mentioned is that it is REALLY cheezy for these guys proclaiming themselves to be such good photographers as to be in a 'mentor series' but not having good enough images that could have been used for this ad that they have to resort to microstock.

I ain't no attorney, but I agree, if a photo is not registered prior to publication (posting on any publicly accessible website constitutes "publication"), you can only seek basic compensation that's essentially what the magazine would pay for the photo normally (such as the $400 mentioned), and not the much more significant "damages" (up to $150K for willfull misuse).

So, if the photo's copyright wasn't registered, that's the first lesson to take away from this.

The second lesson is here that you need to continue to monitor and control your images and their usage. Lose track of them and anything can happen!

I suppose the third message here is just how big a rip-off microstock is (Also RF? If so, the purchasers can keep using it indefinitely, if they wish).

And, incidentally, it's likely that none of the companies mentioned in the ad nor the magazine are responsible for putting the ad together and using your image, and their culpability, even if you did have a case, is probably minimal. In all likelihood, it was built by an advertising agency on their behalf. Nikon, Mpix and the other "sponsors" have no stake in the ad and are very unlikely targets. The "Mentor Series" or the company behind that commissioned the agency to build the ad and paid them would have some more direct responsibility, but would still be at least partially shielded by the agency's handling of the ad building (Note: some companies build ads "in house", and some media assist their advertisers by building ads for them. But these are both less common than an ad agency handling the work.)

This is all a completely moot point, anyway. We now know the image was offered and sold as a stock photo.

Yes, advertising deadlines for magazines are such that the photo was probably purchased 6 months or even a year ago for this particular use.

I have to say that this is the most amusing photo forum post this month:

1) Pictures advertising a Nikon-sponsored event turn out to be Canon-and
2) A professional photographer "forgets" that a picture suprisingly used commercially is actually available for mere pennies through micro-stock.

Wow!? !? !?

-Scott

You forgot
3) the <other> professionals involved are using someone else's shot as an example of the type of work they do and which you will produce after being mentored by them.

Thanks for the confirmation amfoto1. Like I said I doubt I would ever sue over the unlikely event that one of my photos was misused, but this is like the 'verbal threshold' on car insurance we have here in NJ, if you want to be able to sue for the big bucks if you are injured in the future you have to take steps to make sure you retain that protection. At least in this case the fee for filing is pretty minimal, you can actually submit thousands at once on a single CD if memory serves right.

And to think that I almost put a few of my Euro trip images on istock. Luckily I didn't since I'm now putting together a site to sell those same images myself. MANY thanks to all the POTN members who posted about the dangers of microstock companies in the other threads.

aepoc wrote in post #5330723
I hold true to this though: I'm happy that my photo is in a publication with a two million plus circulation.

Congrats on that! Most people are never even fortunate enough get published at all. However, magazine circulation is really a rough (often super inflated) estimation to make the magazine look good. What's really important is the number of subscribers, which the magazines try to keep extremely secret. If I'm going to advertise in a magazine, I want to know their number of subscribers.

Anyways, by no means am I trying to downplay your accomplishment. It's great that you got published. Congrats again.