Having not seen the offending photo in situ its hard to say for sure but in general the reports are not entirely accurate. If the photo was originally tagged as public on its page, Virgin would be legally free to use it however they saw fit under the creative commons terms and conditions. If that is the case then hopefully a court would just see it as an overly litigious teen looking for a college fund and drop kick it out of court. But thats just me being overly cynical. Again.
I don't think a lot of people understand what they are doing at Flickr with the copyright tags ... and how somebody who does understand, can use it to their advantage
it still bothers me when a company that can pay for usage chooses to go this route
What I would say is, if you don't want someone using your photo for something you don't intend, don't post it online, especially not at a site like Flickr.
An interesting discussion. I have a few shots on Stock Xchng and I was approached by a large pharmaceutical company in Canada to use one of them on their website. My immediate thought was, Why is a large and financially well-endowed company wanting to have the use of an image from little ol' me when they are perfectly capable of buying one from one of the usual commercial sites? I therefore responded by saying that they could use it provided they gave a $30 donation to a favourite charity of mine. I got a pretty sanctimonious and huffy message in reply saying that they didn't like the idea of tying in the use of the image to a payment to charity and so wouldn't use it. I have to say that I found their self-righteousness rather less than convincing: the word cheapskate came to mind. I'm therefore with Ms Chang on this one - VM should pay up.
The charity thing is very tight fisted especially as companies receive tax breaks for charity donations anyway. As for Virgin Id still maintain they were within their rights to use it such is the quicksand of internet rights management perhaps the unfortunate girl should be suing the guy who is keeping photos of her on the net instead
Could be that Virgin have more money than said creepy individual? Just a thought.
If any larger company approached me I think I would also do the charity thing! Good idea.
I have recently been asked permission to use one of my images on a website though, which I felt honoured by.
Virgin mobile sued by virgin .. @ theinquirer.net
discussion @ dslreports.com
Quote .. lots of 'em .. go read it