My Photo Used Without Permission

DemiLion said:
Firstly, screenshot everything for evidence before you even approach BTO.

Secondly email them and ask them for details of the licence they have to use your image on their website and social media channels claiming joint credit.

When they state that they don't have a licence request damages from them as follows:

Base licence rate £100 for one year website and social media use.

x2 for flagrant infringement (their terms and conditions indicate knowledge of copyright)
x2 for incorrect credit (false attribution)
x2 for editing and poor page placement, use as a background image (derogatory treatment of work).

Total: £400

Damages reduced to £300 for settlement within 30 days.

NOTE: This is a request for damages NOT an invoice. Make sure you title it as such.
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Thank you for your invaluable advise.

First, screenshot is captured for evidence.
The rest will be follow up today.
 
Is it known that they took the image from Flickr, is it possible that they have bought the licence from somebody else, who took it from your Flickr account?
 
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Nostromo said:
Is it known that they took the image from Flickr, is it possible that they have bought the licence from somebody else, who took it from your Flickr account?
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It could be that case but I will only pursue BTO at this point, they can then claim back whatever they want from their own image source.
 
Nostromo said:
Is it known that they took the image from Flickr, is it possible that they have bought the licence from somebody else, who took it from your Flickr account?
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This is highly likely, and I would expect them to act surprised and claim as much - which will complicate things.
I've had the same with random shots such as doctors surgery used by local press they claimed to have had the picture in their archives for years, and did not know the source!
I wasn't overly bothered with that one which was only 640 pixels - but it was an eye opener it is happening.
 
One would like to think that BTO have no knowledge of this and are an innocent party. I expect they probably need to have words with their design agency - whom I expect were paid for their work. BTO should recover any costs from them. Copyright infringement is as relevant to a charity as any other company. If they wanted to save costs they could have approached you and asked if they could use it and made some amicable arrangement with you.

If you feel bad about asking a charity for money then let them pay you and then donate some of it back to them.
 
4wd said:
This is highly likely, and I would expect them to act surprised and claim as much - which will complicate things.
I've had the same with random shots such as doctors surgery used by local press they claimed to have had the picture in their archives for years, and did not know the source!
I wasn't overly bothered with that one which was only 640 pixels - but it was an eye opener it is happening.
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To me that shows the Editors are incompetent to check the source, ensuring they are credited/paid/acknowledge the rightful owner of the image.
 
drounding said:
One would like to think that BTO have no knowledge of this and are an innocent party. I expect they probably need to have words with their design agency - whom I expect were paid for their work. BTO should recover any costs from them. Copyright infringement is as relevant to a charity as any other company. If they wanted to save costs they could have approached you and asked if they could use it and made some amicable arrangement with you.

If you feel bad about asking a charity for money then let them pay you and then donate some of it back to them.
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Thanks, if they can pay a web developer for work, then they should have no issues with paying a small fee for the image copyright.

I shall treat the discount as a donation to their Charity.
 
@robinsslee lets just clear one thing up.. A charity even a non profit one is still run as a business.. there will be a lot of people involved with the charity who are earning money either direct or indirect.. the website and all content of the website is helping them do that.. I ahve no idea how much you make a year but would almost guarantee people in the charity are earnign more.... My advice to anyone is.. unless it's something dear to your heart that you have a yearning to help then don't let the word "charity" cloud the issue..
 
KIPAX said:
@robinsslee lets just clear one thing up.. A charity even a non profit one is still run as a business.. there will be a lot of people involved with the charity who are earning money either direct or indirect.. the website and all content of the website is helping them do that.. I ahve no idea how much you make a year but would almost guarantee people in the charity are earnign more.... My advice to anyone is.. unless it's something dear to your heart that you have a yearning to help then don't let the word "charity" cloud the issue..
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Thanks for the advise Kipax, I shall bear this in mind.
 
redsnappa said:
The CEO of the British Trust for Ornithology was paid £77,000 in 2018 so I'm sure that paying you £300 won't make them bankrupt.

Here is a link to their 2017\2018 accounts, you can see they are quite a wealthy organisation. BTO Accounts
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Oh dear. So many times I'm disappointed to read how much money given to charities goes on huge salaries for management, travel, hotels and other expenses.

OP.
Regardless of their charity status I hope you pursue them but sadly I doubt you'll change their culture.
 
woof woof said:
Oh dear. So many times I'm disappointed to read how much money given to charities goes on huge salaries for management, travel, hotels and other expenses.
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If you want good experienced people, you have to pay a similar wage to what they would earn in a corporate world. Having headed up IT sales into the charity sector, some of the CEO's I've met have come from serious corporate backgrounds.

Why ? Because in general, charities are run inefficiently, without a "plan". Bringing in experienced people upskills the whole organisation, but you have to pay close to the going rate.

(OP, apologies for the thread hijack)
 
Jelster said:
If you want good experienced people, you have to pay a similar wage to what they would earn in a corporate world. Having headed up IT sales into the charity sector, some of the CEO's I've met have come from serious corporate backgrounds.

Why ? Because in general, charities are run inefficiently, without a "plan". Bringing in experienced people upskills the whole organisation, but you have to pay close to the going rate.

(OP, apologies for the thread hijack)
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The point is.. the same charities who will pay top money for these people will then steal a poor mans work and call it in the name of charity :(
 
DemiLion said:
Base licence rate £100 for one year website and social media use.

x2 for flagrant infringement (their terms and conditions indicate knowledge of copyright)
x2 for incorrect credit (false attribution)
x2 for editing and poor page placement, use as a background image (derogatory treatment of work).
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Wouldn't that make it £800 rather than £400?
 
Jelster said:
If you want good experienced people, you have to pay a similar wage to what they would earn in a corporate world. Having headed up IT sales into the charity sector, some of the CEO's I've met have come from serious corporate backgrounds.

Why ? Because in general, charities are run inefficiently, without a "plan". Bringing in experienced people upskills the whole organisation, but you have to pay close to the going rate.

(OP, apologies for the thread hijack)
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That's your opinion. I have another and it's that It's supposed to be a charity raising money and using it for good cause. I donate money to charities and I donate myself too in the form of free knowledge, effort and labour and I've never accepted a single penny from a charity. It's a constant disappointment to me that others view them as a vehicle for maintaining or indeed improving their own lifestyle and also too often generally having a good time.

Truly good people IMO wouldn't be accepting a £77k salary from a charity or running up the expenses claims.

Shame on them.

IMO of course.
 
woof woof said:
That's your opinion. I have another and it's that It's supposed to be a charity raising money and using it for good cause. I donate money to charities and I donate myself too in the form of free knowledge, effort and labour and I've never accepted a single penny from a charity. It's a constant disappointment to me that others view them as a vehicle for maintaining or indeed improving their own lifestyle and also too often generally having a good time.

Truly good people IMO wouldn't be accepting a £77k salary from a charity or running up the expenses claims.

Shame on them.

IMO of course.
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My point, which you seemed to have missed, is that by bringing in a decent CEO & management team you end up with the charity being effective, and better use of the donations. Peanuts for monkeys. Why would I accept less money for using my skills just because it's a charity? I still have to live, and many of these charities are based in London; believe me, £77k is not a big salary for a CEO in London, in fact it's probably half of what a full commercial business of the same size would pay.

You are more than welcome to your opinion Alan, but suffice to say, I have seen big charities go down the route of "enthusiasts" on the board, and it rarely works. Yes you need people with a passion for the cause to be on the board, but the top team needs to be run by professional directors. Most boards these days have a key set of 3 or 4 directors, with another 3 or 4 being part of the senior management team. That SMT needs to have experience in running organisations and making profits so that they can be reinvested back into the charity.
 
KIPAX said:
The point is.. the same charities who will pay top money for these people will then steal a poor mans work and call it in the name of charity :(
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Totally agree. Some charities will bend/break rules as they seem fit, the same as any other organisation. No matter what they pay their CEO, using images without permission needs to be jumped on.
 
woof woof said:
That's your opinion. I have another and it's that It's supposed to be a charity raising money and using it for good cause. I donate money to charities and I donate myself too in the form of free knowledge, effort and labour and I've never accepted a single penny from a charity. It's a constant disappointment to me that others view them as a vehicle for maintaining or indeed improving their own lifestyle and also too often generally having a good time.

Truly good people IMO wouldn't be accepting a £77k salary from a charity or running up the expenses claims.

Shame on them.

IMO of course.
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I sympathise with your feelings but wouldn’t the logic of your argument mean that photographers, for example, should donate their work freely to charities and never charge them?
I think (and have knowledge of an example) that your way, volunteers only, works with local charities supporting local causes or supporting a local ’institution’ of a national charity.
 
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The OP can check to see what similar images displayed at lo-res for the web sell for, not very much and continually declining, and microstock very very low.

Looking through the BTO website I didn't see any photos credited to agencies, only individuals, likely all birding enthusiasts. I suspect their budget is low, whatever their turnover is. Wrongly many organisations and publishing groups think that images posted on the likes of Flickr and social media are fair game, if at all you often see Twitter or Facebook credited. They need to be educated.

How did you find your image on the BTO website, Google reverse image search?
 
steveb said:
The OP can check to see what similar images displayed at lo-res for the web sell for, not very much and continually declining, and microstock very very low.

Looking through the BTO website I didn't see any photos credited to agencies, only individuals, likely all birding enthusiasts. I suspect their budget is low, whatever their turnover is. Wrongly many organisations and publishing groups think that images posted on the likes of Flickr and social media are fair game, if at all you often see Twitter or Facebook credited. They need to be educated.

How did you find your image on the BTO website, Google reverse image search?
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It's right on the main page of BTO website at the moment, a cuckoo image used as backdrop. No credits or anything, plus the image has been manipulated without my permission or any of my knowledge.
 
I have an image that has been used and abused several thousand times (I posted it on Flickr at full-resolution 10 years ago). Unfortunately it’s absolutely not worth the time, effort or stress of pursuing. I couldn’t even get eBay to remove listings for wall art featuring the photo despite following their procedures to the letter and supplying conclusive evidence (I had to fax them!) Although somewhat ironically it was cheaper to buy the canvas from someone who had ripped my image off than it was to get it done myself, so every cloud…

As far as I’m aware it’s since turned up as several album covers (re-coloured, flipped etc) and frequently appears as a generic background image on TVs and so on. Somebody also mentioned that it was even on a stock photo service. I frankly don’t have the mental strength to do a reverse image search to see how it’s since been used in the past few years!

At the time it won me a £1000 photography prize (a trip to Venice and a DSLR) so it is what it is.
 
ukaskew said:
I have an image that has been used and abused several thousand times (I posted it on Flickr at full-resolution 10 years ago). Unfortunately it’s absolutely not worth the time, effort or stress of pursuing. I couldn’t even get eBay to remove listings for wall art featuring the photo despite following their procedures to the letter and supplying conclusive evidence (I had to fax them!) Although somewhat ironically it was cheaper to buy the canvas from someone who had ripped my image off than it was to get it done myself, so every cloud…

As far as I’m aware it’s since turned up as several album covers (re-coloured, flipped etc) and frequently appears as a generic background image on TVs and so on. Somebody also mentioned that it was even on a stock photo service. I frankly don’t have the mental strength to do a reverse image search to see how it’s since been used in the past few years!

At the time it won me a £1000 photography prize (a trip to Venice and a DSLR) so it is what it is.
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Unfortunately not everyone has the same luck as you do and I do not believe in photography competition. if you don't do anything,they'll continue to abuse until they heard your voice.
 
robinsslee said:
Unfortunately not everyone has the same luck as you do and I do not believe in photography competition. if you don't do anything,they'll continue to abuse until they heard your voice.
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Agreed, I have a Pixy case running at the moment with a business that lifted an image of a tree Kangaroo from my Flickr collection and was using it on their business page.
 
robinsslee said:
Unfortunately not everyone has the same luck as you do and I do not believe in photography competition. if you don't do anything,they'll continue to abuse until they heard your voice.
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Competition win or not (and it was a throwaway comment not really relevant to the point I was making) there comes a point where it’s simply not worth the effort, as unfortunate as that is. I spent many, many hours putting together the eBay case and it came to nothing, even if I had won that particular case another seller had the image for sale on canvas a few weeks later, then another, then another. I’d be trying to put a plaster on the Titanic.

Time with my family is way, way more important than what was an entirely fruitless exercise.
 
I don't know how relevant it is to the thread but here goes. When I had my own business my manageress was pointed to an exact sketch replica or one of her photo. In it had certain items that were certainly in her original photo.
She managed to get in contact with the company that were using it and they put her onto the organisation that did the alteration. They claimed the sketch was all their own work and they had the copywrite to it (the sketch).

It got into a bit of a dispute as she owned the original and they had not asked permission to alter it. it was only when she said she would go to court they backed down and compensated her for it with the proviso they could still use the sketch version.
 
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realspeed said:
I don't know how relevant it is to the thread but here goes. When I had my own business my manageress was pointed to an exact sketch replica or one of her photo. In it had certain items that were certainly in her original photo.
She managed to get in contact with the company that were using it and they put her onto the organisation that did the alteration. They claimed the sketch was all their own work and they had the copywrite to it (the sketch).

It got into a bit of a dispute as she owned the original and they had not asked permission to alter it. it was only when she said she would go to court they backed down and compensated her for it with the proviso they could still use the sketch version.
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Creating a derivative without authorisation/license is still a copyright infringement ;)
 
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Ed Sutton said:
Yes.

100x2x2x2=800

It should read +£100 instead of x2.

100+100+100+100=400
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It's an uplift, not a multiplication.

Anyone even vaguely aware of how copyright cases work would understand that.
 
DemiLion said:
It's an uplift, not a multiplication.

Anyone even vaguely aware of how copyright cases work would understand that.
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The way you put it was as a straight multiplication, hence my question. Your reply was brusque and outright rude, as usual.
 
DemiLion said:
It's an uplift, not a multiplication.

Anyone even vaguely aware of how copyright cases work would understand that.
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Since more people know mathematical operators than copyrght law, treating 'x2' as meaning 'times 2' is a completely reasonable thing to do. I did a google search for 'uplift' in copyright law and found nothing relevant. And, even if 'x' has a 'jargon' meaning in copyright law, re-using the symbol used for a standard arithmetical operation is a surefire way to create confusion.
 
Nod said:
The way you put it was as a straight multiplication, hence my question. Your reply was brusque and outright rude, as usual.
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Brusque, certainly. No point in using more words than needed. Rude?
 
Yes.
 
A brief explanation as to why your calculation was correct would have been courteous but the straight "No" was plain rude.
 
You seem to be forgetting something rather important.

I'm not here you make you feel warm and fuzzy. I'm here to offer an accurate response to the post.

When you start faffing (insert another appropriate word) with that answer, I'm not going to aim to make you feel better about it.
 
DemiLion said:
You seem to be forgetting something rather important.

I'm not here you make you feel warm and fuzzy. I'm here to offer an accurate response to the post.

When you start faffing (insert another appropriate word) with that answer, I'm not going to aim to make you feel better about it.
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But, you didn't provide an accurate answer to the post. Your original post was confusing. Rather than explaining what you did, you referred to an obscure term (uplift) and said that anyone who didn't know this was ignorant. That doesn't explain anything - it just insults people.

The real issue with your original post was the use of 'x2' to mean 'add'. You still have not explained why the use 'x2' should have been understood. Just accept that your use of 'x2' was a poor choice and let's move on

And lastly, as a member of this community, you do have an obligation to be polite and support the community and its members. Being short and rude and blunt does not advance the community but excludes people. In your post that generate this set of responses, you seem to out of your way to insult people. It wasn't just a terse answer but one that deliberately as a put down. That is out of bounds.
 
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ruckers said:
But, you didn't provide an accurate answer to the post. Your original post was confusing. Rather than explaining what you did, you referred to an obscure term (uplift) and said that anyone who didn't know this was ignorant. That doesn't explain anything - it just insults people.

The real issue with your original post was the use of 'x2' to mean 'add'. You still have not explained why the use 'x2' should have been understood. Just accept that your use of 'x2' was a poor choice and let's move on

And lastly, as a member of this community, you do have an obligation to be polite and support the community and its members. Being short and rude and blunt does not advance the community but excludes people. In your post that generate this set of responses, you seem to out of your way to insult people. It wasn't just a terse answer but one that deliberately as a put down. That is out of bounds.
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Well put, but I'll be honest, you're wasting your time on this one
 
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