I read this article this morning, and as a photographer, found it rather surprising. A few weeks ago CityTV used some guy’s photos off of Flickr and used them in an on-air broadcast. The person who took them did talk to someone from CityTV, but did not give them permission to use the photos.
Nonetheless, they aired the photos without any sort of attribution. Obviously the person who took them was upset, and appealed to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) about it. After nine months, the CBSC finally ruled that CityTV should be forced to apologize on air:
As a result, City must issue a rare on-air statement at least twice, during prime time, over the next ten days. That statement will follow a script set by the CBSC, stating that, in part, the news organization breached the aforementioned Code of Ethics and “included three still photographs of the injured burglar without providing any credit to the photographer, whose identity was known to the broadcaster. By failing to provide that accreditation, the broadcaster has failed to honour the intellectual property rights of the photographer.”
What worries me about this particular case is that there seems to be a clause in Canadian Copyright Law which (for whatever reason) news agencies think they can lift photos. Here’s a quote from the directory of CityTV:
The Director also noted that “Canadian copyright law recognizes that third party materials like photos may be used for the purposes of news reporting. It was in that context that we used this photo.”
If that’s the case, then CC licensing seems almost like a waste of time. And if that clause is not meant to apply in this context, then I find it disappointing that an on-air organization would breach the electronic CC license that was placed on the photos. Ultimately they used someone’s photos for commercial means and without any form of attribution, which was outside of the scope of the license applied to the photos. If I were to use CityTV footage on my blog without attribution, I would bet I would get a nice cease and desist letter forcing me to take it down in no time. That they think the laws should be different in each direction seems characteristic of most large media conglomerates these days.
Yep, CTV used images of mine and Keira’s for that story they ran about her identity theft last year – but could we get a digital copy of the story to put on our sites? Nope.
This is terrible. How can a TV station think that they can just simply lift photos off of Flickr? My CC is thus completely a waste of time then. 🙁
[…] of copyright. As any good Flickr user and avid photographer will tell you (like Duane did on his blog post on this same topic), you protect the things you love. Yes, you can protect your photos on Flickr […]
[…] It took nearly nine months for the CBSC to make its ruling. In my opinion, the fact that it doesn’t actually compel CityTV to fix their mistake but merely acknowledge it fails to uphold the spirit of the CC license. As Duane Storey observed: If I were to use CityTV footage on my blog without attribution, I would bet I would get a nice cease and desist letter forcing me to take it down in no time. That they think the laws should be different in each direction seems characteristic of most large media conglomerates these days. [duanestorey.com] […]
Copyright law does let people use photos for reporting the news as part of the fair dealing exceptions. These basically say that you can use any copyright material for certain purposes, as long as your use is ‘fair’. What is fair will depend on the circumstances – the media industry probably have some very solid norms/guidelines about this – but not crediting the photographer would definitely be a big mark against it.
That being said – the CC licences explictly don’t overrule any of the user exceptions provided by copyright law, like the fair dealing exceptions. As is appropriate – allowing use of copyright material without having to get the copyright owner’s permission for things like research and study, criticism and review, reporting the news, judicial proceedings etc is fundamental to making sure that copyright doesn’t become too ridiculously restrictive.
So there are going to be times when people can use even CC-licensed material without attribution, under these exceptions. But they’re going to be pretty limited (and I’m not sure this is one of them). The value of the CC licences is that they let people use your material even more than is allowed by these exceptions – but only on your terms, and they always have to credit you.
Well, then I find it rather ridiculous, if that’s the case, then news agencies can’t get upset when other people use their material on their own blogs. I could just as easily argue that I’m reporting the news, or critiquing their articles. However, they all have strict terminology on their website say that any use without their express permission is against their policies. So they can’t have it both ways.
[…] copyrighted content over peer-to-peer networks. If you want to get into that debate, then I suggest Duane’s recent article about images being used without permission by CityTV be brought into […]