Ran across this on CNN.com -

A teen's family is suing Virgin Mobile for using her picture, posted on Flickr.com, in an ad campaign.

CNN Video

*Resolution - Bigger watermarks across the picture - hmmm... maybe.

I saw this. It is insane for someone to think that anything can be used if it's on the web. This girl was a minor for crying out lab. This case will have an impact on copyright.

Flickr allows you to upload photos with a Creative Commons license (read about it http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ ) meaning that the photo can be used for various commercial and non-commercial uses depending on the settings. Whoever uploaded her photo assigned it a Creative Commons license allowing it to be commercially used.


This really isn't an issue of copyright infringement but it's a case of a photo being unlawfully used because it contains a non-consenting minor. I'm sure it's going to be a landmark case because of the whole non-consenting minor vs. international laws aspect. But, as usual, the news agencies aren't reporting the WHOLE story and are making it sound like the company said they can just take anything they want off the internet, just because it's ON the internet and use it however they'd like... that, really, is not the case at all. The only issue is that the subject in question is a minor and there's no model release involved.

Thanks for clearing that up Melody. I've never used flickr and had no idea they had a creative commens license. This makes more sense now. I still wonder what the ramifications of this will be. The story said it's Virgin Australia and is totally unrelated to Virgin USA. I wonder how this will play out internationally. I have no idea how people can assign photos to be released commerically without any kind of release from the person in it (model release).

so....slightly off topic, if a client uploads photos to flickr (even though they don't own the copyright to these files), should we be concerned?

thanks,
Jillian

concerned yes - but you'd legally still own copyright and could still sue & win. it would just depend if the defendant was virgin or the uploading offender.