About two months ago, I read a tweet of @MartijnKleppe (be sure to follow him if you’re Dutch/Belgian and into photojournalism) in which he linked to an article on the website of Dutch newspaper AD. The article (about people having boisterous sex in the city of Papendrecht, translation of the lead and first paragraph below) used a photo from Flickr as an illustration, without crediting the photographer.
Translation of the article
Neighborhood annoyed by boisterous sex
PAPENDRECHT – Inhabitants of the Talingstraat in Papendrecht are looking for a solution for a couple of neighbors whom having boisterous sex.
The couple moved in a short while ago and argue nearly every day. When the argument is over, they reconcile with noisy and passionate sex, which is still noticeable on the street.
This made me really curious about a couple of things.
- Did the editor choose a right-free photo, or did they ‘steal’ a copyrighted photo from Flickr?
- What was the original intention of the photo?
- What did the photographer think of this usage?
Within five minutes I found the photo, belonging to user Tim PopUp, using ‘Advanced Search’ on Flickr. The editor did use a right-free photo, although they are still supposed to credit the photographer in the caption. The photo obviously wasn’t intended to be used in a sexual context.
Conversation
I contacted the photographer and asked him what he thought about it. This was his first response (thanks Tim, for allowing me to publish the conversation!).
Hello Jeroen
Thank you for taking the time to point this out to me, the photograph is of my daughter, she will be pleased.
Your right they should at least credit me, I will contact them.Kind Regards
Tim
My assumption was right; it was the photographers daughter. I felt I was obliged to tell Tim about the context of the photo, so I translated the lead and first paragraph of the article. I was quite surprised about his response. If it happened to one of my photos (especially in this context), I probably would probably be less pleased.
Hi Jeroen
Thanks again, this does put it in a different light doesn’t it. I don’t think my daughter would be quite as pleased now! She might find it funny though.
The photo has had quite a few views today, this explains it, I was wondering what was happening.
Your photographs are great, lots of interest in them.Cheers
Tim
Obviously, he isn’t pleased with the usage of his photo in this context, but his response is quite mild if you ask me. But then again; what’s the point of being pissed off at stuff like this? It wouldn’t do much good anyway. The photo is removed from the website of AD a couple of weeks ago, although it’s being linked to on websites like NuJij.nl.
How would you react?
UPDATE: Tim’s wife posted a comment for more clarification. Be sure to read it!
This entry was written by , posted on November 18, 2009 at 15:56, filed under Ethics, Legal and tagged Ethics, flickr, Legal. RSS feed for this post.
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Hi, I am Tim’s wife and was there at the photo session where this was taken. Our intention for this session was to take photographs of our daughter and possibly use them for our website pure-photography.org. I was grateful that Jeroen emailed Tim and I agree he should have been credited. The initial intention was to try and get photos that looked a bit different ie showing her screaming. We did not want just to show photographs of traditional smiling people, this feels a bit boring. We certainly did not ask her to look like she was having sex, and none of our photos would. We did not feel too outraged as this paper was not even based in this country. However if the paper that had shown it was local to ourselves then we would have been furious and would have demanded it be removed immediately and asked them to issue us an apology.
We did in fact ask for one of Tims photos removed when it was used on a website predicting prostitutes. They did remove it after 2 hours and apologized. This really is outrageous, I don’t really know what can be done about it.
Amanda, thanks a lot for this comment. It really adds value to my blog post!