How Virgin Mobile Shined a Light on Creative Commons
- Posted by Deidre Bounds on September 24th, 2007
filed in Advertising |
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With so many “citizen journalists” publishing so much content online, the issue of copyright is being tested in new ways. To deal with that in an open way, a non-profit organization called “Creative Commons” set up a series of licensing structures that let’s you define quickly and easily how others can use your work.
Good idea. Assuming you understand what license you are giving away. The Associated Press (and lots of bloggers) are talking about the lawsuit filed by a Texas family who discovered a photo taken of their daughter and uploaded into photosharing site Flickr was being used in an ad. The ad is shown here.
Turns out that Virgin Mobile Australia found the picture on Flickr, published by the photographer under an open Creative Commons license, meaning the photographer gave up his rights. The model, apparently did not. And apparently she’s not excited about the tagline, which says “Free text Virgin to Virgin.”
The damage to Flickr if they don’t deal with this could be enormous. People may think twice about using the site (even though you can indicate that your pictures are copyright protected if you so wish). Flickr’s got great momentum otherwise–they need to nip this in the bud quickly.
In the advertising agency business, all of our contracts talk about who is responsible for securing the rights to photography. It’s a big deal to get it right. Some folks believe that Virgin is on solid ground legally because the photographer donated the picture to the world (knowingly or unknowingly). But for a company as big as Virgin to use the shot without being sure they had permission was a significant mistake from a PR perspective, even if they get away with the legal side…
Shortcuts can hurt… What do you think? Should Virgin be allowed to do this if the photo was published under Creative Commons license that allows them, too? After all, they disclosed right on the poster that they got the picture of Flickr? Or should you always check?