DALLAS — A Dallas family has sued Australia's Virgin Mobile phone company, claiming it caused their teenage daughter grief and humiliation by plastering her photo on billboards and Web site advertisements without consent.
The family of Alison Chang says Virgin Mobile grabbed the picture from Flickr, Yahoo Inc.'s popular photo-sharing Web site, and failed to credit by name the photographer who took the photo. [...]
"The images have been featured within the positive spirit of the Creative Commons Agreement, a legal framework voluntarily chosen by the photographers," [Virgin Mobile's] statement said. "It allows for their photographs to be used for a variety of purposes, including commercial activities."
That's from here.
I think the Creative Commons aspect of this case is especially interesting. But even if that hadn't come into play, this would be a worthwhile springboard for discussing the right to use this sort of material.
flickr and creative commons
I wonder how this will end up shaking out. I just went and made it so my photos cannot be used for commercial purposes. It seems that the copyright holder of the photo in dispute didn't choose well, or, if s/he was like me, didn't choose at all. Except it seems default is "all rights to creator" so it must be poor choice rather than no choice, or they hoped to get paid for any photos that were taken from their sets.
bradley || bleckblog.org
CC has a cost!
My guess is that the photag didn't read or fully understand the implications of what he was doing. Then again, I think the context here is important. They probably wouldn't have objected if the ad campaign was positive! Bruised egos in court...
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Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.