Issues of Copyright

Over at January Magazine, I've been dealing with an issue that's got my blood boiling.

A few days ago, we discovered that one of David's photographs had been prominently used on a very prominent Web site. Prominently. We did a Google image search on this particular author and found that the image had been used on 30 or more sites. But David has photographed hundreds of authors for January over the years. Many of them extremely well known. And he's a great photographer, so his images kick ass. Everyone wants them. In fact, he has sold publication rights to magazines and newspapers all over the world. He's gotten to be a kind of go-to guy for high quality images of authors, because David's are the best.

We started searching for images of other authors David has photographed and we found his images used without permission so widely across the Web, I could not believe my eyes. And I'm not talking blogs here -- though there was some of that, as well. But city guides, culture guides, university and college Web sites, you name it. In short, people who should know better, people who should be sensitive to the needs and rights of creative people, abusing those rights because it's convenient to them.

What is it about the Web that would seem to grant permission for illegal image use? It's easy, but that does not make it right.

Copyright law is not ambiguous. Web use is not more acceptable than print use when it's a matter of copyright misuse. However, in order to reproduce an image in print, you mostly need to contact the photographer to get an actual continuous tone print or a negative from which to work. On the Web, with it's steady 72dpi reproduction, it's possible to just grab something, perhaps rework it slightly (like slicing David's credit off, for instance) and then pop it onto your own site. I mean, that'll work. But it's still against the law.

There have been times, in the past, when issues like this have come up and we've just asked the people using it to pull the image. But there's a standard fee that David charges for Web use (when people do ask) so, this time, we sent invoices to the abusers. And we sent scores of them. Our thinking being that, since cease and desist letters have not always produced the desired result in the past, an invoice should hit them where they live. The replies have been nothing short of astonishing. A few -- a very few mind you -- have been extremely apologetic and have removed the images immediately. We mostly gave these ones a pass. Others, however, have been anything but apologetic.

Some have been outraged that we would have the audacity to charge them for something they'd already used. And one railed at me for taking him to task. I know it's risky, he said to me, though I paraphrase, using copyrighted images. But, generally, when I explain the good work we're doing, the copyright holders waive their fee.

He explained that, in nearly a decade online, his Web site had heard from many outraged copyright holders but that said holders had relented once they knew what he was up to. Honestly, he wrote, if I had to chase down the holder of the copyright for every image we have on the site, I'd never have time to do anything else.

This is exactly the sort of cavalier attitude that is eroding the rights of the creative community. I really feel that, with our little hit back, David and I have been making a stab at this practice. Because it's not OK to use copyrighted images -- or sound bytes or news stories or art -- without permission and attribution. It's not OK for so many reasons, many of which have nothing at all to do with money.

BTW: the image at the top of this column is the one that started all of this. The photograph is of Salman Rushdie, copyright David Middleton and used with permission. For cryin' out loud.