MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: BaldricksTrousers on January 28, 2018, 01:17
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A major company seems to have complained about a photo of the Doha skyline which shows their tower. It happened 5 years ago but I just stumbled over "photo deleted because of copyright complaint" by company XYZ in my list of rejected files on canstock.
Unfortunately, I didn't receive any notification besides the cryptic message in the "rejected" folder that I never bother to look at.
As far as I can make out, the complaint is that in the picture their prominent logo has been deleted from the top of their tower, depriving them of the advertising impact of putting it there in the first place.
I've wondered for a long time about the legalities of altering bits of commercial architecture like that and had, in fact, held back that photo for a long time because the logo seemed to me to be an integral part of the skyline - but someone else then posted an edited picture of the same thing and was getting sales I could have had so I decided to upload after all.
Anyway, it seems you can run into problems from deleting logos, as well as from not deleting them, which may be of some interest. Perhaps the best solution is to submit such material as "editorial" and let the end users decide whether their use is likely to offend.
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A major company seems to have complained about a photo of the Doha skyline which shows their tower. It happened 5 years ago but I just stumbled over "photo deleted because of copyright complaint" by company XYZ in my list of rejected files on canstock.
Unfortunately, I didn't receive any notification besides the cryptic message in the "rejected" folder that I never bother to look at.
As far as I can make out, the complaint is that in the picture their prominent logo has been deleted from the top of their tower, depriving them of the advertising impact of putting it there in the first place.
I've wondered for a long time about the legalities of altering bits of commercial architecture like that and had, in fact, held back that photo for a long time because the logo seemed to me to be an integral part of the skyline - but someone else then posted an edited picture of the same thing and was getting sales I could have had so I decided to upload after all.
Anyway, it seems you can run into problems from deleting logos, as well as from not deleting them, which may be of some interest. Perhaps the best solution is to submit such material as "editorial" and let the end users decide whether their use is likely to offend.
How did you make out that removing the logo was the problem. And you're right, we are forced to remove logos, now if this is right, complaints for removing what the agency wants removed. No win is it?
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It's a city skyline shot, the only change to the building concerned was removal of its logo and CS stated that the company who owned the building had made a copyright complaint. I can't imagine any agency accepting that city skylines can be vetoed by the owners of any one of the buildings just because their building forms part of the skyline, so the only thing left that I can imagine a complaint being made about is the removal of the very prominent logo.
Incidentally, another skyscraper in Doha (not in the picture I'm referring to) is built in the shape of the Doha Bank's logo - which makes logo deletion a bit difficult.
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Believe it or not a nearly identical situation was the subject of a lawsuit a few years ago. A movie studio digitally edited all the billboards in Times Square in their film to show things other than what was really there and got sued by another company for depriving them of advertising. The lawsuit got thrown out.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/business/media-business-advertising-lawyers-for-spider-man-win-fight-over-times-square.html?referer=https://www.google.com/ (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/business/media-business-advertising-lawyers-for-spider-man-win-fight-over-times-square.html?referer=https://www.google.com/)
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Believe it or not a nearly identical situation was the subject of a lawsuit a few years ago. A movie studio digitally edited all the billboards in Times Square in their film to show things other than what was really there and got sued by another company for depriving them of advertising. The lawsuit got thrown out.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/business/media-business-advertising-lawyers-for-spider-man-win-fight-over-times-square.html?referer=https://www.google.com/ (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/business/media-business-advertising-lawyers-for-spider-man-win-fight-over-times-square.html?referer=https://www.google.com/)
Interesting. That must have been around the time that canstock took my picture off sale. Maybe the company concerned was inspired by that case.
Differences in copyright law in different countries might make that a winnable case somewhere outside the US, and while all the agencies use US law the end users could be in any jurisdiction.