Do I have rights to my own photos?

[vilakins]

Can someone in the UK advise me on this? There's a Daily Mail article about Blake's 7 which is using photos of the cast which looked strangely familiar to me--and no wonder. The ones of Michael Keating, Gareth Thomas, and David Jackson have been taken from my Star One convention gallery (Gareth's on the second page) without any acknowledgement or payment, and cropped.

Is this standard practice? Is it legal?

I've left a comment on the page asking for an explanation.

Comments

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

.... wow, how tactless of them. (Although kind of cool in a weird way.) But still. Totally unprofessional. I sure as hell hope they get back to you on that!

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... it says no comments have been submitted.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the UK, but I'm pretty sure that would be actionable in the US.

I gather people grabbing googled images and using them for web or even print articles, legally or otherwise, is actually pretty common. Somebody snagged a photo off my website for a magazine article once, but he e-mailed me about it and paid me for it. (I was a little miffed that he told me he'd done it and that he'd send me a check, rather than asking first, but it was pretty good money, so I took it.)

If they don't respond to your comment, I'd definitely keep pursuing it, especially as it looks from their terms and conditions (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/dmstandard/article.html?in_article_id=255767&in_page_id=1766) page like they're claiming everything on their pages as their intellectual property.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

In Austria, it isn't legal, so I'm guessing it isn't in the UK either.

I would write them a letter, stating how much you charge for the use of your photos (whatever you consider to be a reasonable fee).

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, it's not legal and you do have rights to your own photos, but it's also rather sloppy journalistic practice for people to assume what's online is fair game. (From what I'm reading, the Berne convention standardizes a lot of copyright stuff internationally, and even photos that aren't marked with a copyright symbol are by default copyrighted by their creators upon creation.)

What's worse, if you look at their terms & conditions (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/dmstandard/article.html?in_article_id=255767&in_page_id=1766), they're asserting they own the copyright to all unattributed content. It looks like either NZ or US copyright law applies (http://ahds.ac.uk/copyrightfaq.htm#faq20), it gets a little murky. If they published them in the print edition, too, that's an additional matter. For the website, I'd contact technical@dailymailonline.co.uk and for the print edition, I'd contact editorial@dailymailonline.co.uk. (Personally, I'd invoice them at standard industry rates and ask them to run a correction attributing the photos, by email and snail mail.)

[kerravonsen]

But what are standard industry rates? How does one find out?

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

If anyone's reading comments at all (which may be unlikely), it's probably just junior keyboard-monkeys scanning for dirty words; comments are very unlikely to get escalated to anyone who can act on it.

[kerravonsen]

No it isn't legal, you do own the copyright to your photographs, and putting them on the web does not mean you abrogate your rights to them, not unless you explicitly state that you're putting them into the public domain.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, contacting the people in charge directly is definitely a good idea.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I got $190 US for my sheep photo, IIRC. That was several years ago, though.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

http://www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/index.html

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

They look at them before they publish them.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

That's what I assumed- but it's pretty poor word usage to say none had been submitted when they mean none had been published.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

And here's (http://www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/phonlrat.html) a British website that seems to offer a table of standard freelance fees for online use of photographs.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Wow. I wonder how long they'll have them up. I suppose I could try to get the one-month's rate out of them.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Damn! Beat me to it! :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I wonder how long they'll keep them up. I'd like the one month's fees even: three photos would give me about $1000 in my crap money.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

They probably intend to keep them up indefinitely. Most newspapers keep their archive up for years.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I suspect your chances of getting it out of them aren't bad, actually. But don't quote me on that if it doesn't happen. :)

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

You own the copyright and they have committed an infringement. Papers have been in trouble for that before in the UK.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Be sure and read the link near the bottom of the page about tracking down pirates; it looks very helpful. And it suggests that you invoice them for double the going rate. ;)

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

Well, that'd be a happy ending to this tale, if it works out that way. They ARE nice photos, after all.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'm going to invoice them. Hell, if they pay me the standard freelance rate, I can live off that for a while. I can hope they'll be fair anyway.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I now have links to standard UK freelance rates and I shall charge those.

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

Good. I think they had damn well better pay you SOMETHING for them, and standard freelance rate would be a nice chunk of change! I hope they don't give you any trouble, because that extra money would be sweet. :D

Otherwise, threaten them with legal action. Giving you some money for some photos is going to be cheaper than that. (Not that you actually WOULD but that you COULD.)