Popped in to see favourite website clients (and friends) Maria and Ute in Höhr-Grenzhausen on Monday (up there to talk to a new client) and they were over the moon.

“Look” they said unisono “They featured us in the press article about the Hanau Ceramics market last week”

“Excellent” I said “but did they ASK if they could use it?”

“Noooo, we didn’t know anything about it”

Turns out the paper simply lifted the picture from here, gave the usual “Private” attribution and thought that they could get away with paying nothing for a copyrighted work.

Which – being a 1/4 page title image in a 100,000 print run plus on-line publication – runs to around mumble mumble Euros

Before it’s surcharged for contravening copyright law…..

Update:

Letter from a lawyer: You’re probably not the owner, you’re not a proper photographer, be happy with sod all and thrupence and piss off.

Responded, listing the international publications that feature my work, the websites I provide with images wugga wugga wugga and wait until the deadline I’ve set expires.

They blinked.

“Ok, we’ll pay, but you have to give us the rights to the image”

Oh, absolutely – a one time use in print and online media. Which you’ve done.

Now, show me the money…

09 Jul This entry was published on 9 July, 2015 at 08:00 and is filed under Commerce, NQM (Not quite Mainz). Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.