Is this legal ?

[zwl88]

I suppose this thread of mine would fit the "kopitiam" section best...

I was a volunteer photographer for my school (NTU)'s Surf & Sweat 2011 event at Sentosa last weekend, the event is a public one, so members of the public can register and join.

So this was what happened. After the event, the chairperson of the event needed the photos urgently, he needed to submit a report to the Sports Council and other respective media outlets. So I QC my photos, remove those unslightly and ugly ones, and sent him rest of the photos in RAW (unedited) format. I didnt want to add any watermark to preserve the originals that they receive. Also, i had pass him everything (in a dvd), so that he/whoever receive the photos could select relevant photos they needed. (e.g. VIP shots, event shots, people ..)


few days later. I see an article on stomp.com.sg, with ALL my photos attached to the article with stomp's logo on the bottom left corner of every photo!!

http://youthphoria.stomp.com.sg/breaking_news/article/1897


now how do i know and why can i claim all of those were my photos? cause I do have them publish and shared on the link below. EXACT same photos. And cause facebook limits 200 photos per album, i didnt want to have more than 1 album, so i QC even more photo away before sharing them.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=554459051&aid=334117

I may have passed the photos to my friend, who then pass on to whatever. True the photos were passed to them, so they can publish it. But i clearly didn expect stomp to distribute the entire DvD worth of photos. I understand if they watermark their published photos, i'm fuming, cause they published everything. of course if my name was there, there would be less smoke from me.


Here's my question. Is this legal? in terms of copyright.

Of course as a student i would not bother sueing or doing anything. But I would just like to know if what was done legal. At the same time, What should i do to prevent such things from happening again? Watermark my photos before sending to anyone even if they need it for official purposes?

Thanks for the replies in advance

 

[eleveninth]

keep the good ones give the ugly ones.

u can email stomp about it, think they will remove.

 

[allenleonhart]

i'm partly glad i didnt volunteer for this. actually considered signing up for a photographer role haha...

well. did u sign anything? if u didnt sign, photos are still urs. just email stomp on it. if they dun do anything... consult a legal professional if u wanna take action

 

[ArchRival]

Stomp about it. I believe 'caught in the act' is the correct category.

 

[catchlights]

you let the images out of your hands, noting much you can do about it. I mean, the photos still belong to you, but you can't recall all of them back.

next time, you just give a low res version with watermark on it, even it is one thousand images, running downsize, sharpen plus watermark in a auto run batch processing will not take up too much of your time.

if anyone asking for full resolution, they can only pick one or two images, ask them to sign a document state you grant them REPRODUCTION rights only, and CREDIT need to be accompany with the images if published.

if they want full copyrights, or want these and that, very simply, just pay money and you will be very happy to comply, else they can go and find somebody else.

 

[zwl88]

Thanks for the replies.

I didnt sign anything. Was totally voluntarly. Last year i did cover the event as well, on request of a friend who was in the event committee, so this year i did the same, not expecting this outcome.

What irks me is the notion of stomp receiving-uploading-watermarking-EVERYTHING . Its like a student going to a site, wholesale copy-n-paste everything into his project and passing it off as his own. So yea.

In future, will definitely watermark , resize my images when asked to contribute to media outlets who would probably use my images for commercial purposes.

Thanks again for the comments, glad to receive feedback.

 

[9V-Orion Images]

What irks me is the notion of stomp receiving-uploading-watermarking-EVERYTHING .

They do this to video clips ripped from other video sharing websites as well. ;(

 

[kei1309]

They do this to video clips ripped from other video sharing websites as well. ;(

we...the citizens of singapore...complained that China is the country that is most guilty of copyright infringement.....

 

[tehzeh]

http://ppas.sg/site/index.php?Itemid=9&id=7&option=com_content&task=view

unless you have some comments attached to your raw files.... i think it's really hard.

since raw files cannot be reproduced from jpg, it should be the best way to prove that you were the first person to have those original files.

what you can do is, to email stomp about it... but the fact that you mentioned that you passed the whole disc to the whoever chairperson and also allowed whoever needs it to take the photos.. made it seem like you voluntarily allowed your photos to be leaked out. plus, you didn't sign a contract that you want a credit somewhere...

Look, if they need your photos for official purposes, you get them to pay you for the original copy or you just an extremely low res file to them before seeing your name below the photo. or sign a contract with the organization.

When did you post the photos on facebook? Was it earlier than them?

 

[9V-Orion Images]

we...the citizens of singapore...complained that China is the country that is most guilty of copyright infringement.....

A senior Chinese aerospace engineer once had the audacity to quote a Charles Caleb Colton's line that "Imitation is the sincerest of flattery". :mad2:

 

[Yappy]

we...the citizens of singapore...complained that China is the country that is most guilty of copyright infringement.....

We were like China not too long ago!

 

[ortega]

looks like they are reporting the news about the event and was to lazy to select images
so just upload everything

 

[kei1309]

looks like they are reporting the news about the event and was to lazy to select images
so just upload everything

honestly Stomp is nothing but a place for singaporeans to complain about irreverent topics, with no professionalism at all in any of its "journalism"

 

[daredevil123]

TS, take this as a lesson learnt and move on.