So What Can You Do When a Company Steals Your Photograph and Uses It For An Advertisement on Facebook? Apparently Not Much
A few weeks ago Veronica Belmont alerted me to a photograph that I’d taken of her that was being used as an advertisement on Facebook (see above). Veronica wasn’t very happy with her likeness being used to promote the company Wireless Emporium and also pointed out that my photograph (which is not licensed for commercial use) was also being used without authorization.
At first I wondered if this was just part of some sort of Facebook rights grab. I’d heard that Facebook can use your photos in advertisements unless you specifically opt out of this — but the thing about this photo was that neither Veronica or I had actually ever uploaded the photo to Facebook. (By the way, if you want to opt out of Facebook using your photos for advertisements you can do that here like I did.)
So I concluded that the only way for this photo to get into a Facebook advert would be for someone to steal the photo and make the advert and upload it and buy space to promote it on Facebook.
Of course the first suspect that I thought of was the company that was actually being promoted in the advert, “Wireless Emporium.” After a few tweets about the advert, one of the company’s representatives Greg Daurio, who seems like a very nice guy, got in touch with both Veronica and I. We traded a lot of back and forth emails and he ultimately provided me the following statement below on their position on this unauthorized photo use:
“About two weeks ago we here at Wireless Emporium noticed a bit of chatter on Twitter regarding a Facebook ad that was promoting our company. Unfortunately, the chatter was of the negative variety, as the model whose photo was used in the ad (Veronica) and the photographer who took the picture (Thomas) hadn’t given permission for that image to be used.
In terms of people power, Wireless Emporium is a relatively small company with less than 30 employees. In order to stay competitive, we outsource a portion of our SEO efforts to professional firms. While we do our due diligence to make sure we only do business with reputable firms, unfortunately, one of the firms we contracted wasn’t living up to their end of the bargain.
After doing some investigating, we concluded that this firm tried to leverage the popularity of Veronica in the tech community to grow our brand awareness without her permission and without consulting us before moving forward with the ad. Unfortunately we have no concrete evidence that this firm indeed was the one responsible for the rogue Facebook ad. Nonetheless, within 4 days of finding out about the ad, we terminated all business relationships with this SEO firm based on our internal investigation.
We are extremely apologetic to both Thomas and Veronica and appreciate their patience and understanding while we investigated the matter internally. We are also thankful that this was brought to our attention. It is extremely important to everyone here at Wireless Emporium that we grow our business in a moral and ethical way. And when we discover that one of our partners isn’t following those same guidelines, it is important that we act swiftly and accordingly.
Lastly, we here at Wireless Emporium would like to thank Thomas and Veronica for allowing our voice to be heard on this matter. They certainly didn’t have to do that. We wish both the best of luck moving forward.”
I don’t know very many people at Facebook, but I did put a Facebook message into a fairly senior person there to see if he might be able to help but never heard back.
As far as I’m aware there is no real mechanism for a photographer to use to get Facebook to tell you who paid for an advert illegally using your image. I don’t know the name of the alleged SEO company that stole the photo and I’m not sure that there is ever any way that I will know. Such is life on the web for photographers.
Anyone have any thoughts or advice on a situation like this?
Where Kindness is a Card Game
An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc.
Dear Ms. Bartz:
It’s been a few months since I last posted a letter to you. I wanted to take this moment though to check back in with you on Flickr. In my last letter I suggested that Yahoo was not giving Flickr the attention that it deserved. Since that last letter there were a couple of nicely orchestrated shout outs to Flickr. Blake Irving did his Hell yes we love Flickr tweet. He made a stop by the FlickrHQ offices complete with a silly “milking margarita’s” photo op, etc.
Blake’s a pretty senior guy at Yahoo and so at least it *feels* like Flickr’s not being totally and completely ignored anymore, at least a little bit.
Also since my last letter to you, Flickr “accidently” deleted a guy’s account. Flickr was able to restore his account in the end (after a lot of bad press at places like CNN) but even more importantly announced that they are actually working on a tool to undelete bad account deletions in the future (finally! yeah!).
These are both really positive things, even if they came about the hard way.
However, what is really blowing my mind this morning is seeing how badly Flickr handled the censorship of these Egyptian secret police photos over the weekend. Granted, not everyone is probably working on Flickr on the weekend, but really Carol, they screwed the pooch this time.
You have a reputation as a savvy well regarded businessperson Ms. Bartz. Business is your thing. You’re all business. So as a businessperson let me ask you this. What is the value of the photo above that went viral for your competitor Facebook?
I mean this photo was seen all over the internet. You couldn’t miss it if you were online. It was EVERYWHERE. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in PR value? Maybe millions? You guys reportedly spent $100 million last year on your “the internet is under new management yours” campaign right? You understand the value of PR I think. I think we can both agree with the statement that the viral photograph above (and others like it) were worth a hella lot of money in PR value for Facebook.
Aligning a social media business like flickr with popular pro-democracy bloggers to me is an absolute no brainer from a business perspective. It is just the smart thing to do if you are trying to attract one of the most active viral groups of people on the web today.
So while your competitor Google actually has one of their employees on the ground in the fight for democracy in Egypt (another PR win), what is Flickr doing? They are CENSORING photos by a popular Egyptian blogger, Hossam Hamalawy, aka Arabawy — a young rising leader in the Egyptian revolution.
This man is a hero Carol. He is on the ground in one of the hottest spots for news on the planet — he has a huge following on Twitter, and is very well regarded. And what are the photos that flickr is censoring of his? Photos of Egyptian Secret police officers suspected of TORTURE.
So Flickr has an opportunity to try and embrace social media and what is going on with revolution in the Middle East or they can support a dying regime’s alleged torturers.
And what side does Flickr choose?
Let’s forget about what is right or wrong here for a second. Yahoo took it pretty hard on the chin a few years back when you turned over a Chinese dissident’s email to the Chinese Govt resulting in his imprisonment. Jerry Yang was called before Congress and browbeaten (another bad PR moment for Yahoo). Surely Yahoo can see that siding with the bad guys here is just simply a bad business decision from a PR perspective. Right?
It gets worse Carol. In order to justify censoring these photos, Flickr did it by citing a frequently ignored provision in their community guidelines. The provision that says the work in your flickrstream has to be “your own work.” They bounced his secret police photos on a stupid technicality of a rule that is largely ignored by everyone on Flickr anyways.
Everybody on Flickr knows that Flickr is *chock full* of photos that are not a user’s “own work.” Even your own Flickr staffers photostreams are full of images that are not technically “their own work.”
For example — Matthew Rothenberg, who runs flickr for you, has this photo of a masturbating dinosaur in his photostream that was taken by your former Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ (according to the tags on his photo). This is not “his own work,” the exact same provision that flickr used to censor Arabawy.
Forget for a second that from a customer service perspective an “award” like this might be insulting (apparently it’s given for “excellence in the field of community abuse and advocacy”) the photo clearly is not Rothenberg’s “own work.” Trust me Ms. Bartz, hypocrisy is never a good thing when justifying something like this.
There are other images in Rothenberg’s photostream that are not “his own work,” too and he’s not alone. Other flickr staffers have posted photos in their photostreams that are not “their own work.” I’m not picking on Rothenberg here, he just happens to be the guy who runs the place so he’s the best example.
From a PR and business perspective, your competitors are gaining incredible PR value from the revolution in the Middle East. Google, Facebook, Twitter, all of them. Flickr should be included in that list. They are a natural fit. Instead Flickr makes an incredibly stupid public statement retweeted all over the world by influential folks like NPR’s Andy Carvin or Clay Shirky.
This just makes no possible rational sense. Any thinking rational businessperson should see the value of being positively associated with young pro-democracy forces in Egypt in social media today.
I hope you read this letter. I also hope you go back to Flickr and have them undo this mistake and repost Arabawy’s photos. It’s sort of too late now as Anonymous has already helped him (and the Egyptian people) out and reposted all of the photos in an uncensorable location here (the right thing and a no-brainer positive PR act for Anonymous) — but at least Flickr would be making a statement that they made a mistake here. It is in both Yahoo and Flickr’s interest to look like an active engaged social media company, not some tired old asleep at the switch has been.
I also hope that you would also take a hard look at the institutional culture at Flickr. A culture that thinks publicly posting a photo of a masturbating dinosaur award for community abuse is funny, yet blows a major PR opportunity by abusing totally the wrong customer is not the right culture for an engaged social media company going forward.
Yahoo and Flickr can and should do better than this.
She’s My Diamond
Flickr Cites “Community Guidelines” For Censorship of Egyptian Blogger’s Photos
TechCrunch is reporting that Flickr has cited “Community Guidelines” for censoring an Egyptian blogger’s uploaded photos of Egyptian Secret Police. The photos in question were originally uploaded by Hossam Hamalawy, aka Arabawy to his Flickr account here.
According to Arabawy these photos were taken from State Security Police headquarters in Nasr City which he says “hosted one of Mubarak’s largest torture facilities.” Attention was raised over this deletion yesterday after NPR’s Andy Carvin tweeted out concerns about the removal.
According to Techcrunch, Flickr issued the following statement to them regarding the content removal:
“The images in question were removed because they were not that member’s work. As stated by the Community Guidelines, ‘Flickr accounts are intended for members to share original photos and video that they themselves have created.’
Flickr isn’t a place for members to just host images but a place where members share original photos and video; and the Flickr community is built around that. For this reason, when we discover images that violate this provision, we may remove such images from the account and, in some instances, delete the account altogether.
While we regret that this action has upset the user, he must understand that this is not a decision we ever take lightly but only as necessary to ensure that Flickr remains a great place to creatively post and share original photos and videos with friends, family and the world.”
Personally I think that this is one giant cop out on Flickr’s part. Flickr knows that Flickr is *full* of photos that are “not a member’s work.” In fact Flickr staff themselves routinely upload photos to their own personal photostreams that are “not their work.” For example, is this Flickr Maps screenshot of a Rev Dan Catt photograph really Flickr Chief Matthew Rothenberg’s own work? What about this screengrab of an AOL advertisement? Is this Rothenberg’s “own work?” How about this screengrab of a Valleywag page? While I suspect that this “flickrhq masturbating dinosaur award for excellence in the field of community abuse and advocacy,” is in fact Rothenberg’s own photograph, his own stream, as well as the streams of many other flickr staffers are full of photos that are not “their work.”
Withdrawing Arabawy’s photos of suspected torturers by citing a technicality that the photos were not “his own work,” is disingenuous. The photos were pulled because Flickr was pressured to pull the photos and chose to respond to that pressure rather than to take a stand for freedom. Flickr knows that Flickr is chock full of photographs in photostreams that are not a members own work and this act on their part simply points to another act where they have selectively applied one of their rules to suit their needs using their overly ambiguous Community Guidelines as justification. Flickr should apologize to Arabawy and restore his photoset.
Certainly there might be times that Flickr ought to consider enforcing a policy of a user “not uploading their own work.” Blatant copyright infringement. An account by someone simply hosting eBay graphics. Etc. But using this technicality to remove politically sensitive and important public domain images from a Flickr user’s photostream is not one of them.
Update: While looking closer at the photo “flickrhq masturbating dinosaur award for excellence in the field of community abuse and advocacy” in Rothenberg’s stream, it looks like it actually also isn’t “his own work” either. At least according his tags, the photo was taken by Heather Champ. I suppose when you’re the boss of flickr you can get away with this sort of blatant community guidelines violation. If you’re a journalist exposing torturers from a corrupt government on the other hand, well, not so much.
Update #2: on Slashdot here.
Update #3: It looks like the photos that were taken down off of Flickr have been republished. Anonymous Operations posted a new link to the photos and tweeted that they are a “gift to the Egyptian people.”
Amicable Settlement With the World Erotic Art Museum
Recently I posted a large number of photographs of works of art housed at the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami Beach. I also posted blog entries accusing the World Erotic Art Museum of fraud in defensively responding to my unauthorized posting of the photographs. After discussions with the World Erotic Art Museum, I have decided to remove all of the posted photographs and to retract all of my prior blog entries that may have caused World Erotic Art Museum and its owner Naomi Wilzig embarrassment. I commend the World Erotic Art Museum for the collection it has compiled over the past many years. Its efforts have resulted in a collection that will hopefully be available for enjoyment by generations to come and I encourage everyone to visit World Erotic Art Museum and discover it for themselves. I took the photographs for my own private use and posted them as an individual without authorization. I was not asked by the World Erotic Art Museum to take the photographs or to post them on its behalf nor was I authorized by World Erotic Art Museum or any representative of World Erotic Art Museum to do so. I formally retract all of my prior posted blog entries related to World Erotic Art Museum and accusing them of fraud. I sincerely apologize to the World Erotic Art Museum and its owner Naomi Wilzig for any embarrassment, negative light or bad press that my posting of the photos or blog entries may have caused them.
Standing and Watching
Come and Find Me
Wondering If I’ll Sleep
