Intellectual Property or just plain bullying?
Publishing the Totnes Pulse can be a surprisingly dangerous game.
We’ll never be perfect but we work hard to be fair and even-handed. When it comes to hard-cash though, there are companies who are always waiting to pounce on image licence infractions that you didn’t even know you’d made.
It is completely right and fair to have copyright and intellectual property (IP) protected. No argument. What is unfair is the lack of movement with an infraction from large corporate companies like Alamy, Adobe, Shutterstock, PA Media and many more.
Nowadays, it’s not IF they find any of their images that you might have used, it’s WHEN.
Image searching algorythms are running day and night scouring the internet in the hope of finding an image copied and pasted onto a blog or news site like this one. Once it finds that innocuous picture of tomatoes you copied, the system kicks in. A dismaying email appears in your in-box, informing you of your criminality with a threat of legal action and a fine of anything upwards of £400. The EXIF data on that picture proves your guilt and you are automatically liable to the amount they choose to sue you with. If you are using imagery on a website or blog – be very sure you have every right to use it.
Do you own your own face?
Apparently not. Dua Lipa was sued for using a photo of herself! A couple of years ago, we were sued for having an image of Totnes Market – it was a truly rubbish image and had those ‘Alamy’ marks all over it. There wasn’t even a story with it. It was literally a placeholder to see where it would appear on a page. Unfortunately (for us), the ‘Publish’ button had accidentally been pressed. So there this crappy picture was; sitting un-noticed by anyone, including us, all alone on a page all by itself. That page had literally one visitor – a bot, searching high and low for infractions. We pleaded for weeks with Alamy but legally, we were over a barrel and we had to pay them to leave us alone. It was 50/50 whether we just closed up shop and gave up the Totnes Pulse altogether.
It happened again with some tomatoes and now we’ve just been sued for an image of a woman who contacted us to promote an awards ceremony that we published, blissfully unaware that the image of her belonged to PA Media. They now want £421.88. I contacted them to advise of the situation and as a ‘gesture of goodwill’ it’s now a bargain £337.50. Be aware that saying sorry and removing the image doesn’t cut it, they still want the money. This can have an existential effect on this publication. – the mistake was mine and I will pay it personally to ensure that the Pulse and it’s supporters are not affected but it still hurts! My consolation is that I get to write this ranty article about it.
Do you own your own face?
Apparently not. Dua Lipa was sued for using a photo of herself, the womans image we used in the instance above, sympathised but can’t do anything about it either. If she placed her own OBE award image on her own website, she could be sued just like we were.
Industrial Extortion
This litigiuos behavior is an unpleasant example of big corporations preying upon the ‘little people’ in life. They are using the legal system to supplement their bottom line. Of course they have a right to protect their intellectual property but this is a systematic, automated punishment system that is knowingly cruel and not fit for purpose. It’s my speculation there are teams in image publishing companies whose daily work is to field all the begging emails asking to be excused for all the reasons you might expect and to politely offer good-will gestures of early payment discounts that if unpaid, will be escalated to a court summons. In any face-to-face interaction in daily life, virtually no-one would behave this way.
Be very very very careful.
Yes, I can be reasonably accused of naivety, but today the law seems designed to catch you out. It’s getting harder and harder to NOT break it. So here is an excellent page for checking Top Tips for blog and website owners – Don’t wait to be sued before you read it. Don’t be tempted to take an image from an internet search and don’t readily trust the ‘copyright free’ button. Use the reverse image search to see if your picture belongs to someone else – it probably does. Don’t assume the internet is so vast, they won’t find you and don’t think you’re too small a fish for them to fry – they genuinely don’t care and have systems primed and ready to get you. Don’t use images someone gave you without checking them thoroughly. – (Sorry about all the ‘don’ts’ there!)
Be safe out there.