Copyrights of pictures on a website

[pitway]

I hope this is the right place for this, if not sorry
(moved from 'useful links' to 'legal' section where you are more likely to get answers - moderators)

I have pottering about the internet on various Letting websites only to discover that pictures I have taken of properties that I advertise on my website have been lifted and used by someone else advertising the same property.

My website clearly states that use of it's content or photographs is solely for use on my website and for the owner of that property to use for their brochure advertising.

After hours of work making a website and taking the trouble to go to these properties and take photos, am I being petty to get annoyed at my work being use elsewhere for monetary gain when I get nothing from it, not even an acknowledgment that I took the photo?

Another thing that is hacking me off a bit is in the past I have let owners of property use my photos for their own advertising needs, I have one or two of those that no longer use our advertising services but still continue to use my photographs (in fact one website carries 80% of my photos without any credit given to me) So, by initially giving them the use of the photos while they used my services did I give away my rights to that picture. One person I confronted about this responded by saying yes it may be your photograph but it is of my property (and then some unrepeatable words for here along the lines of bog off!)

I normally have no objections to other people using photos etc. but when people start to extract the Michel I think it is about time to think about doing something about it. Especially when they take them without asking or giving me some form of credit for it

Perhaps I'm just getting touchy in my old age

What do think?

Tim

Sorry if this is in the wrong place perhaps the mod would move it if needed

[andyh4]

Tim

I can understand you being hacked off about these incidents.  I am no expert but on the first case, if they have taken a copy of your photograph and placed it in their website then I think you have got them, but on the other hand if their website has a frame that points to your picture on your site, then I think it is less certain.

 

Good example yesterday or the day before where someone lifted an article out of a local paper and posted it here about a new Ryanair link - including a copyrighted picture.  I think it was barely inside the copyright laws because the picture root was still on the original server.  In other words it was pointinto the picture rather than having lifted it and copied it.

 

In any case I would e-mail the culprits and suggest that there may be lagal consequences if they do not desist from using your property.

 

On the question of who owns the pictures after you have "sold" them to a customer - I am guessing it is the customer unless you have something in your terms of sale that says differently. 

[Will]

Legally, it depends on whether the photographs were taken before or after October 2003, as UK copyright law changed then, and the new laws, which were introduced to go some way towards harmonising copyright law throughout EU member states, apply to anything produced after that date.

It seems clear that your images are being used for commercial purposes, so copyright is most probably being breached (more certainly under the post-2003 legislation). Having given a form of permission for your images to be used might slightly weaken any case you have, though see the following paragraph.

Under copyright law (both pre- and post-2003) you, as the photographer, own the copyright. The fact you may have 'sold' the images only allows the buyer to use them for the express purposes for which they are sold, it does not transfer legal title of the images themselves (if this was not the case, photo libraries and image banks would soon go out of business). Exceptions are work carried out in the course of employment, when the employer owns the copyright, or where a specific agreement as to ownership of copyright of freelance or commissioned work exists.

As the previous response suggests, the best thing to do in the first instance is to contact those people who are using the pictures, and the owners of the web site (if different) to point out that you believe that your copyright is being breached and to request that your images are removed or suitable payment (or acknowledgement) is made. Legal action is likely to prove long-winded and expensive.

This link might be useful: http://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law

[Iceni]

I am not sure how this would go down under French rules but in the UK and US if someone 'borrows' your content (and yes, I have been borrowed), you just write and explain that all ISP's have in their Terms and Conditions rules against copyright theft and can lose their ISP and perhaps even their domain host as they also do not like copyright infringement - I personally would remove any sites I host if I found that they contained copyrighted material borrowed from other sites. I know of one case where Nominet actually took a domain name away from one person and it was brought by the person who owned an almost identical name and whose business had been copied (passing off I think this is called).

May I make a suggestion. Make a very small logo and put it on the photograph,  most people who steal do so because they cannot or do not understand how to take and optimise photographs for the web themselves. The alternative is to put your company name as an almost invisible layer over the photograph - I have had to do this in the past and it has not caused me to lose any business - actually I got work out of it because other people wanted their photographs protected in this way.

If these sites were written by reputable website design companies, they will also remove the offending pictures if you can prove that they are yours, I had a whole site taken down in half an hour when a 'borrower' told me she paid her website designer to write the site, the designer told me that she gave them the text and they took her down - she then had to pay them to write original text.

I am often asked to put company logo's on sites. I always get the client to sign off that this is what they want me to do and they take all responsibility as this again could be viewed as a copyright problem. If the logo is linked to an advert or offer the company is making there is not such a problem.

The avatars on this site are just examples of copyright fun and games - if the avatar is not original, don't we have a copyright issue unless express permission is given?

[Quillan]

I seem to remember there is something funny about this and it goes along the lines of the following.

If a person or company asks somebody to take photo's of a item (say a Gite for simplicity) on their behalf for whatever reason and lets say to enable said second party to advertise their gite then the photo's actually belong to the gite owner. If they were 'film' pictures as opposed to digital they would effectivly own the negatives and should ask for them as part of the contract. Especially if they have been charged for said photo's. This also goes for printing when for instance you get  printer to create headed paper and compliment slips, the original artwork always belongs to the person who commisioned it in the first place i.e. the company.

This would not be the case for say a person taking a photo of something like say a deckchair on a beach or some mountains or racing cars at an event where the photo's would then belong to the person who took them (unless contracted do so for by a second party).

As happens in a lot of these cases it's best to do something like Iceni said and use the 'watermark' feature available in MS products to 'watermark' your name and website name on to the photo's then it is up to the others to come to you to get it removed and you are in a better position to argue the toss.

 

[Gyn_Paul]

Quillan - you're dead right about the differences.

Back in the dark ages when I worked in TV news, we used a lot of images on 35mm slides. There were two distinct types of images: those submitted by freelances, and picture agencies, and those which had been comissioned. An example of the latter would be pre-season photocalls for all the local footie teams. We would pay a freelance photographer to shoot head shots of the whole team. He would be paid a day rate, and supply the developed 35mm's. The copyright of those images rested with the BBC because we commissioned them, and could use them any number of times with no further cost. Other images were supplied by photo agencies or by freelances 'on spec'. The deal was that we paid nothing to accept the images and hold them in our library, but if we used any we paid a so-called 'flash fee' (very large for first use, then less for each subsequent use). But no matter how many times the image was used, the copyright always remained with the agency or freelance.

I also spent ages over the years explaining to beginners that any image they filmed was also potentially copyright and if permission was not obtained before transmission, the copyright holder could claim an impressive amount of damages (an interview in a Disney shop with a cardboard cutout Mickey Mouse as a backdrop, comes to mind). Compaired to the heavily-regulated media, the internet is still a bit like the Wild West, but the days when 'anything goes' must surely be numbered.

paul

[Jo Taylor]

Just a thought - most posters are talking about UK copyright, but isn't there an oddity in French law which requires the owner's permission for their property (or themselves) to be photographed? Might there not be a similar oddity regarding the ownership of such images?

A couple more tricks -

1. Disable right click on images on websites (can still be pinched by using "print screen" but the quality will be impaired)
   
2. Overlay a transparent .gif, what happens then is that the person trying to copy the image will carefully save a blank image. Again can be circumvented by "print screen" but it makes it all a little more bother!

Jo

[Will]

As I mentioned above, after October 2003, copyright law has effectively been harmonised (at least in all important respects) throughout the EU member states. If the pictures were taken before October 2003 then older national laws may still apply.

Copyright of photographs remains with the photographer unless there is a specific agreement to transfer the copyright to whoever commissioned the photographs (unless the photographer is employed under a contract of employment rather than freelance or commissioned, in which former case the copyright belongs to the employer). Such freelance agreements are standard practice when somebody like the BBC or a large publishing house commissions a freelance photographer, but would be very unlikely if somebody just asks for a photograph of a house for a gite advertising website.

As far as law on things like copyright and libel are concerned there are very few precedents for dealing with internet sites, so accepted practice is that exactly the same principles apply to internet sites as to printed or broadcast media.

The example of the Mickey Mouse cutout is an interesting one. International copyright convention has an 'incidental inclusion' clause to cover such things, but corporations like Disney and MacDonalds employ whole departments just to search for possible breaches of copyright or libel law - these seldom reach the courts but can result in financial settlements.

As a freelance magazine editor/writer/photographer working in France and Britain I have to regularly deal with such copyright matters. 

[Penny29]

Hi,

For what it's worth I believe Quillan's answer is exactly right.

Recently, a friend of mine (in France) fell out with her website designer after many years of working together on her gite advertising.

Things got very childish after the (very expensive) designer's services were dispensed with. First of all the designer suddenly decided that she had undercharged for the first few years work & tried to bill my friend retrospectively for extra money for past years "work" (unbelievable but true), then the designer hijacked the website (even though the services and the site had been paid for in advance for several months more) & this "professional" then added derogatory remarks about the gite on the website  which clearly had an effect on business and bookings for 2005/6. This forced my friend into using a brand new website, and so she used some of the pictures from the previous site and, of course, the ex-web designer started screaming merry hell about breach of copyright.

I was with my friend when she took legal advice on this - basically the law came down to the fact that the pictures were taken specifically for the purpose of advertising that particular gite & therefore the owner of the gite has the "moral" right to copyright. The fact that the gite owner also paid for the services & time of the designer to take and site the photo's was taken as further proof of my friend's moral right to the photos.

This shouldn't be confused with copyright to library photos etc. Gite advertising is different - the photos are only useful to the person who owns and advertises the gite.

Hope this helps some. Irksome as it is,  you may have to let this one go - my friend's website designer didn't & things got very silly now my friend has put the whole matter in the hands of the gendarmes!!!!!

[Russethouse]

>>but isn't there an oddity in French law which requires the owner's permission for their property (or themselves) to be photographed? <<<

I think this may be correct as although our little Quimper Club journal is hardly a commercial publication (members only)in the way some things are, we still have to get permission to use pictures of peoples items, for instance if a particular piece has been lent to the museum we have to separately get permission from the owners of the piece we want to feature. 'Carte blanche' from the museum is not enough.

[pitway]

Hi everybody,

Lots for me to read and digest here! but like penny29 said I may well have to just take it on the chin certainly with the people that have continued to use my photos for there own websites after stopping to advertise with me, or it is likely to get silly and just turn into a slagging match,

The other issue where the person has lifted the photos off my site to use with advertising sites like French Holiday Homes and Owners direct, I feel I have every right to contact those companies and suggest that the person who has supplied the images had no right to do so, However, like before, that is likley just to get a bit silly especially as he is supposed to be a friend and nieghbour

I will just have to sit down and just go through the 100 or so photos on my site and mark them with a logo or some copyright text and put it down to experience. it just brasses me off that some people think they can just do what they like without asking even more so when the pictures that I have used to advertise his properties on my website have been credited to him and the photographerI will just have to have a bleat at him next time I go over there!

How do you switch off the mouse right click function can a simpleton do it?

Thanks for all your comments

Tim

______________________________

www.vendee-gites.co.uk

[Jo Taylor]

Hello Tim,

I won't put the code in here as it'll probably do strange things, just google for "right click disable script" - should bring up several sources.

HTH

Jo

[Fritz]

Strewth folks, don't you think you should try and get out more?

If someone nicked a photo of mine, I'd be well pleased.

[JohnM]

[quote]Strewth folks, don't you think you should try and get out more? If someone nicked a photo of mine, I'd be well pleased.[/quote]

Yes, so would I.... unless I had invested time and trouble in taking the photograph and that person who nicked it was benefiting from my efforts and I wasn't.

I don't know what it cost for the original poster to take the photo's. If happened to take the photo on his way to the post office using the last frame on his film, then he might not be concerned. However, if he made a special journey just to take photo's and spent a considerable time there taking a number of shots to show the house at it's best light, with the full expectation of recouping his outlay over the next few years, then I can understand the concern.

 

[pitway]

[quote]Strewth folks, don't you think you should try and get out more? If someone nicked a photo of mine, I'd be well pleased.[/quote]

Normally this would not really bother me, but when you have spent your time taking the trouble to go and take picture and gather information and then someone lifts it from your website, puts it on websites like French holiday homes and owners direct and makes money out of it, it begins to niggle.

But more to the point they didn't ask!

Tim

___________________________________

www.vendee-gites.co.uk

[Kayjay<P> <P><P>"Passer sa vie à lutter contre la connerie est le meilleur procédé pour mourir dépuisement."<P>]

I suspect that you might be on a bit of a sticky wicket here, Tim - your web site actually states

"To the best of my knowledge the graphics used within this site are public domain and copyright free......"

and

"The majority of the pictures displayed were taken by Hetheringtons France solely for use on this site..."

Obviously one knows what you meant but it's not terribly clear that you are claiming copyright or for what.  In addition, one assumes that the owners of the properties in question supplied the photos to the sites or at least gave them possibly arguable "permission" to use them.  Your other problem, should they choose to argue the toss, could be establishing your own copyright if the images were taken with a digital camera.  With a normal camera, holding the negatives is fairly conclusive but in the case of a digital camera it could be a lot harder even to establish who took the photographs if they choose to claim it was them!

I suspect that you may just have to swallow it this time and watermark in future....