Copyright Woes

[Bruce Hart]

 

Hi all,

I work as an in-house Architectural Visualiser, and just wanted to share this story with you. Last year I was working on a Design Approval submission for a project in New Zealand and prepared the image attached. Much of my work involves design development rather than producing market material.

 

During the design of this particular building, I was instructed to stick some kind of lifestyle graphic in the section which is dotted in red. The suggestion was to put something in to do with Queenstown where the project is located. So after a quick Google image search I found numerous photos of a person doing a bungy jump, and stuck it on. The image could have been anything, simply to indicate that a graphic of some kind would eventually go in that space.

 

As you can see the image attached is not particularly great, and was only intended to be used in-house, and shown to the Client. At this point I had not even bothered to stick in a background image given its WIP nature. It was also done essentially for free (but I won't go into that).

 

Months later I found out that the Client had published this picture in a small Queenstown newspaper without our knowledge. The Photographer who took the picture of the bungy jumper saw this and sent my company in Australia a bill for $7000 for use of his image.

 

I and several others in our office regarded this as extortion, however the management staff decided to pay this guy.

 

The photographer in question has been boasting on his Facebook page that he was on the case with this image and that he had found it on 125 other web sites, and these people were going to receive an email. I'm guessing that like myself, most of these people did't see any copyright info on this particular image, or see any Meta data indicating who the author was.

 

I should have known better, but I write this as a cautionary tale in case someone else finds themselves in a similar situation.

[notamondayfan]

That's a pretty hard lesson to learn, but thanks for sharing it.

 

If anyone else is thinking of using google images, instead try Flickr and search using their Creative Commons for commercial use just to be safe.

 

Dean

[heni30]

You forgot to put the bungee pic in the rendering.

 

Thanks for the warning. I always use Getty images and if you register and sign in, their watermark company info is removed.

[M V]

George, can you still use a Getty image in a rendering though? I assume you have to own it. In the past I have used Shutterstock. I think its like $10 for a high res image. Beats paying $7k!

[heni30]

I spoke with them and they consider a rendering a comp/mock up situation. So you can use their low res downloadable images for renderings because it's to their advantage that if the client sees the image in the rendering and wants to use it in the built project he will have to buy the license and get a larger res version.

 

The download-ables are low res though so you probably will want to use them where they won't be very big.

Edited September 12, 2013 by heni30

[Francisco Penaloza]

I am sorry Bruce, I had a similar situation years a go, and the problem is after you send the image to the client you don't have any control of what they will do with that, nowadays everything in pay and all those cost goes to the final rendering price.

 

 

 

I spoke with them and they consider a rendering a comp/mock up situation. So you can use their low res downloadable images for renderings because it's to their advantage that if the client sees the image in the rendering and wants to use it in the built project he will have to buy the license and get a larger res version.

 

The download-ables are low res though so you probably will want to use them where they won't be very big.

 

Hey George be careful with gettyimages, when they say mock up they mean, you print small size to show the client in a meeting, if you do a final render with that image and send it to the client you need to pay for that image, you can not still using the same for the mock up. If they see that image printed or in any website they will hammer you very hard.

 

There is several website with lower prices Istock photo and other, you pay lower fees and still good quality, take a look at those instead getty.

[notamondayfan]

I've used bigstockphoto.com in the past, good quality and a hell of a lot cheaper than Getty.

 

Also I guess it might be useful to add a sentence to contracts stating that you only give / license the use of final images / animations, and any drafts, proofs, etc cannot be used for anything other than client approval. That way you're covering your arse in case the client publishes the drafts. Also there's nothing worse than seeing you're half finished image on a website or magasine, when you know it was a draft and the final image was so much better!

 

Dean

[Bruce Hart]

You forgot to put the bungee pic in the rendering.

 

Ha - yeah I forgot

[AJLynn]

I've used bigstockphoto.com in the past, good quality and a hell of a lot cheaper than Getty.

 

Also I guess it might be useful to add a sentence to contracts stating that you only give / license the use of final images / animations, and any drafts, proofs, etc cannot be used for anything other than client approval. That way you're covering your arse in case the client publishes the drafts. Also there's nothing worse than seeing you're half finished image on a website or magasine, when you know it was a draft and the final image was so much better!

 

Dean

 

That still wouldn't necessarily cover you. You'd have a complaint against your client and the owner of the photo would have a complaint against both of you.

 

Really if you want to play it safe you can only use photos you have rights to use. Stock photos that you've got a license for, photos you've shot yourself etc.