Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Australian Cellphone Company Slammed for Using Public Domain Images



An example above.

"Virgin Mobile has been accused of breaching people's "moral rights" after it took images from a popular photo-sharing website without asking permission and used them in a national advertising campaign.

People around the world who posted their photos on the Yahoo-owned Flickr website have objected to their images being used in hundreds of Australian billboard ads, accompanied by provocative captions.

The campaign -- Are You With Us Or What? -- features images from the website branded with Virgin Mobile's own slogans.

They include: Work Friends Are Just That; If You Enjoy Your Company Too Much You'll Go Blind; and Strangers Are Just Serial Killers You Haven't Met Yet.

Source

I have read the TOS for Flickr and it is not at all obvious that photos posted as publically available can be used commercially. And TOS specifications are such a soup of legalese that few people would try to read them anyway. So I think that Flickr are the ones who should be taking most heat here.

Following an avalanche of complaints, Virgin Mobile has canceled the campaign. What they did was probably illegal under Australian copyright law anyway.