Given the current media fascination with Twitter, it was inevitable that excitable journalists would start writing articles about "celebrities" and their tweeting habits. All fine and dandy for the most part.
What has disturbed me has been that auxiliary services such as Twitpic appear to have been abused by journalists and their paymasters to distort the copyright owner of the original material posted to said service. In the case of Twitpic, a service for uploading photos for public viewing and sharing on Twitter, this seems to be carte blanche for the Daily Mail to nab whatever photos they like from the service to fill in the blanks for their non-stories about Twitter. And change the copyright on the photo in the process.
According to Twitpic's terms of service (PDF version):
By uploading your photos to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your photos on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites
All images uploaded are copyright © their respective owners
Therefore if you upload one of your own photos to Twitpic, you still retain full copyright ownership of your photo, but it may be used by one of Twitpic's affiliated sites. I'm pretty damn sure that doesn't give Twitpic or ANYBODY else the right to change the actual copyright on the photo itself as seen from the following examples on the Daily Mail web site.
To date, Twitpic has not responded to my queries relating to who their affiliated sites are.
Here are some examples of copyright switcheroos happening on the Daily Mail's web site:
This one suggests Twitter themselves hold copyright to the photo:
Even if Stephen Fry, Lilly Allen, Tom Felton or their agents have approved the papers for the using these images – why is there no proper copyright attribution for these photos? The copyright belongs to Stephen Fry, Lilly Allen, Tom Felton or whoever took those photos in the first place. NOT with Twitpic or Twitter.
The Daily Mail have failed to respond to my queries when I asked them about this issue. Contacting the Press Complaints Commission resulted in a reply that states that because it's a legal matter of ownership of the photo, they're unable to investigate any complaint relating to this issue.
Is this becoming a case where newspapers are resorting to the mantra "If it's on the Internet, it must be free", which was the excuse I was given by one of my former employers after I discovered they had lifted one of our photos (taken by Jennifer) and used it in a national print campaign for an advert in .Net magazine.
On the plus side, if you can get them to use a photo you took (and therefore, under UK copyright law, own the copyright to) you could just take them to court for copyright infringement. Don’t think it’s possible – well, the BBC were caught using an image from Flickr on BBC Birmingham News ( http://www.bitterwallet.com/bbc-uses-copyright-image-from-flickr-for-news-24/7498 ) and had to pay the photographer (admittedly, it was settled out of court for an “undisclosed sum”: but the photographer turned down 75GBP… (a certain “Eagle headed” news site also has the story).
The Press Complaints Commission is unlike to assist unless you are personally (or professionally) involved in the issue – see Martin Belam’s post about them http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2009/02/pcc_debate.php and his response to an article on, shock horror of horrors, the innocent of all sins “we won’t use paparazzi…nah, forget that” Daily Mail – http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2009/02/pcc_broken.php .
(rant over)
The down side is that suing people these days costs a heck of a lot of money.
Sometimes just the threat of taking them to caught may be enough – something like “It has come to my attention that you used my photograph in a commercial context without my prior written permission. This is a breach of the UK Copyright Act and I am writing to you to try and avoid potential legal action…”. Taking them to the small claims court is relatively cheap (I know from experience that Corbis tracks down people illegally using their clipart and offers them to pay 80GBP to avoid being taking to court: one of my ex-employers was caught like this for a website they had put up 5 years previously).