Friday, March 21, 2008

this is not nam, there are rules here, dude

People often ask me why they can't download photos easier from my flickr site. In the past I had no problem with this, but then I started seeing my photos being used on other websites without my permission. What's the deal, you ask? Well, some of these sites are commercial businesses that are gaining profit from their illegal use of my copyrighted images, for one. I've let a few of my images be used for on-line purposes and in a few magazines, with and without compensation to me - the difference being they all asked me for permission first.


The latest in the long line of cheats is Discovery Communications, Inc., who is using an image of mine for an article about riding your bike through the winter. Looking through the legal garble on their site, you'd think they would at least try to cover their ass by obtaining my permission - and of course you'd be wrong in that thinking. In this case some guy named Lloyd Alter decided to use an image of mine in his article - notice how there is no way to contact him nor is their an easy way to contact Discovery Communications, Inc. I sent off a letter asking them to take down my image and to compensate me for its use since 26 November 2007 - my guess is they ignore me.

[edit - as you can see by the link, my image is no longer being hosted on their server. No word yet on compensation.]

6 comments:

Patch O'Houli said...

Is Flickr now the free-for-all domain of cheapskate marketeers? That's lame. I'm not worried about my photos, they suck. But you use a big boy camera and yours are awesome. Lloyd needs his scrotum stapled to a frozen telephone pole while the Mpls Mafia derby him.

Fleck

Snakebite said...

Sue them! Sue them! Sue them!

Peter said...

why doesn't flickr offer a simple watermarking service?

Lunatic Biker said...

Yeah, I noticed it's hard to steal shit off your flickr site.

jordan said...

Planet Green is apart of the TreeHugger.com network, owned by Discovery Comm. I'm not sure if you noticed, but this is the same one as the Discovery Channel. Look a little harder for contact information. Better yet, find a telephone customer relations number.

jordan said...

Planet Green is apart of the TreeHugger.com network, owned by Discovery Comm. I'm not sure if you noticed, but this is the same one as the Discovery Channel. Look a little harder for contact information. Better yet, find a telephone customer relations number.