Daily Mail, Sun & other papers have published my photos online without my permission

whosthatgirl1989

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right board to post on...

My friend was in an article yesterday or day before about her weight loss. Along with the article are "before" pictures. These were photos I had taken on my camera on nights out.

On the Daily Mail, these now have copyright of someone else written on the bottom. Surely the copyright is mine as I took the photo??

My friend probably gave them permission to use my photos. She was not paid for the article.

What are my rights?

Lighthouse_in_the_dark

speak to a lawyer, but you may inturn end up sueing your friend as she will have probably signed a release form.

no one on here can give you definitive advice so again speak to a lawyer.

spacey2012

The rates newspapers pay for on line photos would not be worth the hassle.
You could bring a copyright claim in the patents courts, but it is very specialised.
The best advice is secure your photos by marking your name in electronic text on them.

theianfox

There is no need to contact a solicitor. This is a very straightforward case and you can handle it yourself. For future reference the best place to get free advice from regarding anything to do with Intellectual Property is "Own It" you'll have to search for the address - I'm not allowed to post links.

1) To sum up your position the photographer owns the copyright of any image they produce, regardless of whether or not your friend told the papers they could use the picture they should have asked for your permission.

2) There is no clause for compensation in cases of copyright infringement, or to put it another way, if you catch a company using your work without your permission all they have to pay you is the going rate. This is why so many companies just use any image they want because if they get caught all they have to pay is what they would of had to pay had they gone about it the right way. In this case a reproduction rate for the work, which is not going to be a great amount of money, but I personally think you should contact them just on principal.

3) Don't expect a quick a resolution. The papers in question will stall for ages before they finally pay up - but they will pay up eventually. One dispute I was in with a book publisher dragged on for 6 weeks and they were bang to rights.

The best thing to do is phone ask for the duty editor and explain your position. They'll probably try to get away with just an apology saying newsrooms are busy and they don't have time to contact every photographer. This is simply one approach to keep their costs down.

If you do try and make a claim it will be with the small claims court and you'll have to prove how much they should have paid, the best way to do this is to look to see how much a photo library would charge for supplying an image to a newspaper.