Window on the West
by Mary Rupert
The general election of 2015 was fairly uneventful; however, there were a few things that got me a little upset this year.
One was the unauthorized use of my photos. In general, photos are not owned by the people whose faces appear in them. Photos are owned by the photographer who took them or the organization he or she works for, in general.
A last-minute postcard was sent out last week, a negative attack on one of the candidates. There was no street return address and no post office box return address on this postcard. It was obviously a hatchet job by someone trying to mislead the voters, as it quoted one of the candidates in support of an issue that I had never heard her speak about at the various candidate forums, and it also was an issue on which she would not have had a vote at her government level, anyway. The attack postcard, I thought, was terrible.
As I looked at the postcard, I realized one of my photos had been lifted, apparently from one of our social media websites, and used on that postcard without my permission. No one called us to get permission to use it. The photo had been cropped and distorted, made wider than its original.
It’s fairly easy nowadays to steal photos from social media websites, all you have to do is click on them and save them. However, there is a copyright symbol on our web page, and I never give permission for my photos to be used in candidates’ advertising and promotional material. My work was done solely for news use by my media outlet. The news stories and photos are for you to read, but not to reprint without permission. Any other use was not approved.
I am aware that it seems like “everybody is doing it” by grabbing work and sharing it on social media; however, that does not mean that I agree to it. It’s likely that people don’t understand the rules regarding photos and original work.
All work, including mine, has a natural copyright that is still in effect, I believe. When you use someone else’s work, unless there is an agreement in place, you should pay for it, and I was not paid for the use of my photo on that campaign postcard.
Sometimes exceptions are made for purposes of research; however, I do not agree that these campaign examples fit into that exception.
In general, a good rule to remember is that if it appears the photo is from a privately owned or an individual’s website, not a government website, you should ask for permission before using it. Many professionals consider it stealing to take another’s work from a privately owned site without asking first.
Frankly, regardless of what you could win or not win in court, or whatever the courts may say about it in the future, many professionals would still consider it stealing, and taking potential earnings away from the professionals who have spent enormous amounts of time in training and have years of experience in their fields. So I would think that if a candidate uses these photos without permission, the candidate may have made a very bad impression on the local journalist.
Sometimes you will see news organizations reprinting information. This is usually information that has been released for public use under a “news release” heading, information sent to them for the purpose of publishing it, or government documents and information that are considered to be available for public use. In general, information that is on a government website such as the Unified Government’s website or the state of Kansas website is considered to be in the public domain. I was taught that they are available for sharing and public use. Many stories and photos you see on news media and private organizations’ websites are not publicly funded and are privately owned, and not available for sharing.
It’s true that I would not have given this permission for use of my photo in a campaign, and so the action of just taking it is actually taking money away from a second photographer, maybe someone in private business, that the campaign would have to hire and pay.
I saw another one of my news photos about the election on a candidate’s Facebook page, and I ran into it frequently this month. Here again was another photo that I did not give permission to share, and it was used without my permission. However, since it was not a negative ad, it did not make me nearly as upset as the other photo.
It’s something to think about next time you are tempted to reprint something — do you have permission? Does it explicitly say you can reprint it? Is it on a government website? Otherwise, give them a call and ask them for permission.
To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].
