I was quite shocked yesterday to read a short article from the BBC regarding use of images from The Twitter and The Facebook during the recent London riots. The article revolved around the fact that one Andy Mabbett complained about the BBC using photo’s from Twitter, and other social media sites, in their coverage of the riots without permission from the owners. The complaint (and subsequent response from the BBC) is here: http://pigsonthewing.org.uk/bbc-fundamental-misunderstanding-copyright/.
Apparently though, this response was incorrect so the BBC Editors set out to make an official statement of how they deal with such situations. You can read it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/08/use_of_photographs_from_social.html
So, what was I shocked and appalled by?
In terms of permission and attribution, we make every effort to contact people who’ve taken photos we want to use in our coverage and ask for their permission before doing so.
And so they should when using other people’s work! But that part is fine; now, read on…
However, in exceptional situations, where there is a strong public interest and often time constraints, such as a major news story like the recent Norway attacks or rioting in England, we may use a photo before we’ve cleared it.
Sorry, what?! You would happily use a copyrighted image without permission?! No, that’s just wrong! If you don’t have permission then you should not use it! It’s very simple.
We don’t make this decision lightly – a senior editor has to judge that there is indeed a strong public interest in making a photo available to a wide audience.
I think that makes it even worse. Whether you commit a crime without any care in the world or if you spend a short time deliberating over it, it is still wrong. Just because a “senior editor” says it is OK to steal, that doesn’t make it better. If a “senior mob member” said it is OK to steal I guess that also excuses the rest of the mob?
Imagine if I took that stance. There are a lot of British ex-pat’s that live in Spain that would probably love to see the current series of Dr Who (one of the BBC’s finest televisual outpourings). However BBC’s iPlayer does not work in Spain (it requires a UK IP address for obvious license-paying reasons so these people cannot see it). There are a lot of them so it could easily be argued that it is in the public’s interest for these people to watch Dr Who. So, I will email the BBC to ask permission to rip the video and post it online, publicly, for free for any member of the public who wishes to see it. I will give them a couple of hours, maybe a day at most, to let me know whether or not I can. It’s quite important, and in the public’s interest, to see Dr Who as soon as possible after broadcast as there are many online discussions that may provide spoilers for these viewers. If I don’t hear back from them then that would mean it is OK to act in this way.
I presume you can see the idiocy of this stance? I wonder if the BBC will…
The 2nd half of Dr Who starts again in a couple of weeks. I have plenty of spare webspace and bandwidth…
I understand your response, but there’s plenty of situations where people want their photos to be distributed, but don’t want to be contacted, or indeed can’t be contacted.
The obvious example is is one of people in countries where people face punishment for distributing photos of government crackdowns.
If the photo doesn’t have copyright information attached explicitly stating that the photo is free to re-use and who the original owner is (so that their approval of free publishing is correct and not added after the face), you’re saying that the photo shouldn’t be used?
Personally I think it’s an important subject, but us users of photo sharing services need to take a lot more control of our own copyright – attaching copyright statements and digital watermarks just as “professional” photographers and agencies do.
Without these steps, even the best endeavours from responsible organisations like the BBC will struggle to identify the original owner of a photo over someone who’s simply republished it on their own account.
I wrote a little more about it on my blog here: http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/298/copyright-for-images-in-social-media
And in those instances that is fine. So long as permission has been granted, and not just sought by the BBC (or any other news agency). If they don’t have permission to use an image or video etc then they could always send one of their reporters to get a photo or shoot some video – I mean, isn’t that what some of our license fee goes towards?!
You don’t have to implicitly state that something is copyrighted for it to be copyrighted.
If you don’t want people to see your photos perhaps you shouldn’t put them on the internet?
I think you totally misunderstood… I don’t care if people see my pictures, but if a company decides to use it then I want it to be attributed to me once they have asked my permissions, and received my permission, to use them.
I know you don’t have to explicitly state that something is copyrighted for it to be copyrighted, but it does make life a lot simpler in a world of people re-sharing, copying images, downloading an image and uploading it as their own, etc, if people were to embed a message on the photo stating the permissions (or lack of them) on that photo.
p.s. my original comment seems to have disappeared, did you enable disqus in the mean time or something?
Yes, sorry Ewan – playing with Disqus at the wrong time… It didn’t work well with this theme though so now removed it 🙂 I was just after an easy way to pull in tweets as comments!
I do like you idea of yFrog, TwitPic etc adding a little ‘(c) @MaFt’ onto each image etc and it’s pretty simple to do too. However, it’s also easy to crop the image to remove that so it wouldn’t stop those sites that steal images and claim them as their own. However, it would maybe help for more legit news items who are less likely to crop the image – though they should still have permission before using it.
For those who’ve not seen it then read Ewan’s idea here: http://www.ewanleith.com/blog/298/copyright-for-images-in-social-media
Well, are your images clearly copyrighted? If so, you probably have nothing to worry about. Photography has become commoditized – everyone has a camera phone and lots of people have D/SLR’s, most people who post photos on twitter don’t care who uses them, those who do will clearly copyright them. You sound like a ‘rent seeking’ producer.
As mentioned in another reply, one does not need to write the words ‘copyright’ for an item to be copyrighted. The fact is the BBC were using images without permission. Their policy clearly states that they won’t always bother getting permission – seeking permission is NOT the same as being given permission.
I have no qualms if the BBC want to show photo’s of my cat on TV (check my TwitPic stream – there’s nothing newsworthy on there!) however if they do so without permission I would be rather annoyed. I, myself, have contacted blog owners for permission to use photo’s in my posts (one that springs to mind is the ‘cat in a microwave’ picture where the owner of the photo was overjoyed that I had actually asked permission instead of just stealing it).
The simple fact is, that if you do not have permission to use a picture (or video) then you should not use it.
Yes, there are times when people should not be named as a source but permission should still be sought and a simple ‘used with permission’ would cover that – so long as it *was* used with permission…
Putting a photo or video online does not implicitly state that it is free for public use! BBC’s iPlayer, as an extreme example, is on the internet but that doesn’t mean anyone can simply use and publish that video without their express permission.
And, sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean by “You sound like a ‘rent seeking’ producer.”… Care to expand?
The BBC has a method(although easily circumvented) in place to stop people outside the UK viewing their pictures. I would say that putting pictures in your public twitter timeline without any copyright wording is pretty clear indication that you don’t mind who uses it.
Re ‘rent seeking’ – I maybe mistaken, but you sounded like someone who was annoyed because they are not making money out of their photographs. A rent seeker is someone to who seeks to extract money from a market without adding any value – IOW, if lots of people are willing to allow others to use their photographs for free, you are not going have much luck seeking ‘rent’ for yours without artificially distorting the market.
The world has changed, copyright needs to catch up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
I disagree with the ‘needing to put copyright statements for everything posted online’ claim. Regardless of source, people (in general, and not just BBC) should not use other people’s work without permission. It’s as simple as that.
If I happened to be near the riots and happened to have taken a picture and happened to have posted it to the twitter and the BBC happened to have contacted me to use this picture then I would not be seeking any monetary gain from it. They could use it, no problem, because they had asked for permission. My issue is where they don’t hear back from the owner and just assume they can use it. They can’t and shouldn’t!
As for ‘rent seeking’ – I’m certainly not! lol I’m not a professional photographer, not even semi-pro – in fact I wouldn’t even class myself as an amateur photographer… The blog post was more in the seemingly odd stance by the BBC that if they don’t have permission it means they can use it…
I’m not sure where you coming from – if the photo has already been broadcast on yfrog et al, would you expect someone to contact you for permission before they retweet it?
Sorry about the rent-seeking accusations – I’m just trying to understand what your issue is – you want to share things, but then you don’t – where is the line in sand for you?
A retweet automatically says who it is from and, in any case, the original media is still in the same place – i.e. the yFrog/TwitPic page etc. The BBC were not doing this. They were taking their images from the source and adding them to *their* website and *their* TV broadcasts – they were copying and reusing as opposed to simply linking to it (which is what a retweet does).
I, personally, would have no issue if the BBC or Sky wished to use one of my images, although I would expect them to ask first before they copy it and use it in their own media. Linking to an image/video is very different from actually taking a copy and redistributing it.
“Linking to an image/video is very different from actually taking a copy and redistributing it”
Why?
Do I really need to answer that??!!
Can you not see the difference between showing someone where something is (a link) and simply copying it and giving it to someone else without explaining that it’s not your own work (copying and redistributing)?
MaFt
Ok, so the copying thing is moot (everyone who has clicked your yfrog link has a locally cached copy!).
You are worried about redistribution without accreditation.
Why not set up your own photosharing service that lets users pick a license for their pictures, with a specific statement on the site that users copyright/copyleft should be respected (like https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7883). You could then get the EFF to help you follow up any violations where commercial entities try to redistribute.