At 05:41 PM 4/30/2003 +0100, Roger Wesson wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>In an idle moment at work today I was browsing around some pages about solar
>eclipses, and to my surprise I found a site belonging to a commercial eclipse
>travel agent which has used one of my photos without my permission:
>
>http://www.eclipsetours.com/transit1.html
>
>Mine is the Milky Way photo about half way down the page. At least they
>included my name.
>
>As they're a commercial company I don't want them using my photos for free,
>and I want to write to them and tell them that. What I don't know is what
>exactly I should be saying to them and how to approach this sensibly. Should
>I just ask them to cut the photo or would it be realistic to suggest some kind
>of payment? I thought I might suggest they give me a free ticket on the
>Mauritius tour!
Either approach is realistic, IMNSHO. Ignorance of copyright is no excuse,
since the modern copyright regimen's existed pretty much world-wide for the
past fifty or sixty years. Unless you specifically stated that your photo was
being released to the public domain, they shouldn't have grabbed it for their
own use without at least attempting to contact you and acquire your permission.
Explain that you'd like to be reasonable about this to achieve a resolution
acceptable to all parties. If they don't play nice, hint at legal action (this
assumes you're prepared to follow through, of course -- sometimes all it takes
is a letter from a barrister to get people's attention).
Garth
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|