image used on website without permission

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pmac

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peter
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Hi

Looking for some help for a friend. He is a rather large youtube account holder and as well as video he takes a lot of pictures. He recently found out that a large US company was using one of his images without his consent on the main page of there website.
How is he best to go about this? ask for payment? image be removed?

Any info would be great
 
not enough info....

are they hosting the pic..linking to the pic.. wheres the original hosting and has that got usage terms and conditions.. have they crdited it..is it a commercial website...

step one..take a screen print

step two ask them how they got the picture

step three invoice them

whats the point of asking them to take it down? they are using it.. get paid :)
 
Tell him to hire a lawyer who specialises in US copyright laws.
 
KIPAX said:
step one..take a screen print

step two ask them how they got the picture

step three invoice them

whats the point of asking them to take it down? they are using it.. get paid :)
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This sounds the best course of action. If they say no then get the lawyers involved. Remember that the other company will have to employ lawyers too so it will cost +£1000 before anything happens.
 
okay talking to him via facebook.

The image was taken most likely from his Facebook page, all meta data is included .including stated copyright.There doesn't look to be any sort of crediting to him.
The image will be hosted as its the backdrop for a retail stores main page.
They have also edited the images a fair bit

he has already taken a screen grab
 
pmac said:
The image was taken most likely from his Facebook page,
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If the company have a deal with facebook then ........... AFAIK when you upload your pics to facebook your giving them all rights to do what they want wiht it...
 
KIPAX said:
If the company have a deal with facebook then ........... AFAIK when you upload your pics to facebook your giving them all rights to do what they want wiht it...
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I doubt they have a deal with Facebook. Facebooks rights grab is for them to use the images within Facebook, for advertisements etc. It isn't for them to allow other companies to use your photo.

Although Facebook strips the metadata when an image is uploaded so @pmac, if the meta data is intact then they didn't get it from Facebook.

@pmac Get your friend to register the image with the US copyright office. I believe you can do it if you're not a US citizen. It will also entitle them to more rights such as being able to sue in the US for damages, and get more damages awarded.
 
Alisonfd said:
I doubt they have a deal with Facebook. Facebooks rights grab is for them to use the images within Facebook, for advertisements etc. It isn't for them to allow other companies to use your photo.
.
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we dont know who the other company is.. do we know its not facebook related partly owned or ?

like i said earlier.. not enough real info.. just a scenario
 
KIPAX said:
we dont know who the other company is.. do we know its not facebook related partly owned or ?

like i said earlier.. not enough real info.. just a scenario
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The image is being used as the backdrop on a retailers website. That isn't Facebook, as Facebook isn't a retailer and doesn't own one. Facebooks right grab doesn't give other things they own such as Instagram the right to use your images, they have separate rightgrabs on each of their products to cover that, as they each only cover the service it was uploaded on as each of those services is a separate entity and has separate terms etc.

Facebook can only use your images within Facebooks services. The only time another company can get to use those images, is when they pay for a Facebook adverts, e.g. a sponsored post but that is still within Facebook - not on a retailers website.
 
You'll need to read up on US copyright law, believe it or not, they didn't like the Berne convention as a standalone entity.

As above, to get damages the image has to be registered with the US copyright office. And there's a time limit from 'first published' to do that (3 months off the top of my head).

Once that's done, approach them for a settlement.

If they've removed a watermark, forget about the niceties of registration, he can order his sports car now, the yanks are really hot on that.

And despite the above, it should be easier than in most foreign countries, there's no language barrier and they're very keen on IP in the states.
 
Unless Facebook has taken an interest in selling toy guns I doubt they have any relation to the retailer.

I dont belive his image had a watermark but they have ran it though software to give it a cartoon/manga type look, but you can tell it was clearly his image, when there side by side.

He has already contacted them with an invoice for the use of said image,but from what he showed me he was a tad too nice and its not what i would have sent.
 
pmac said:
Unless Facebook has taken an interest in selling toy guns I doubt they have any relation to the retailer.

I dont belive his image had a watermark but they have ran it though software to give it a cartoon/manga type look, but you can tell it was clearly his image, when there side by side.

He has already contacted them with an invoice for the use of said image,but from what he showed me he was a tad too nice and its not what i would have sent.
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He should try and get some free legal advice from a lawyer which is specialized in US copyright. Most people when they need legal advice, go to a lawyer. But for some reason photographers go to other photographers, even though we might have no clue what we're talking about.

I'd also say your friend sending an invoice wasn't the best idea. You are limiting what your work is worth (The video I linked below covers this).

I can understand your friend wanting to just get paid and avoid the legality of it but the company might be earning a lot of money because of that photograph. For all you know they might of used this photo on other offline places.

I'd recommend everyone watches this video where Ed discusses the legal stuff, its a bit long but its worth the watch. I'd also recommend that @pmac, you link this to your friend.


It refers to US copyright overall but some of the things still stand. Its also worth knowing all this stuff for when a US company infringes your copyright.
 
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pmac said:
The image was taken most likely from his Facebook page, all meta data is included
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Don't Facebook strip metadata from images? You sure it's from Facebook?
 
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