Licensing Awareness Working (LAW) Group / Discuss

uwajedi    says:

Hello all... this might be of interest to you.

Last July, I was victim of an attempted burglary at my home in Toronto. In his flight, the would-be burglar fell from my second floor deck and broke his leg. While waiting for the police and ambulance to arrive, I took photos of the burglar as he lay on the ground below.

A newsman from Citytv also came to the scene. I refused his request for an interview. As he was poking around the property, I asked him to leave. We spoke briefly -- he was nice enough; it's the media that I find objectionable. I mentioned that I had taken pictures of the perpetrator and was looking forward to posting them on my Flickr site. He was interested in seeing them, so I provided him with a card.

I left that afternoon for a weekend in Montreal. When I returned home, a friend showed me his recording of the news story which is when I discovered that Citytv had lifted my photos from my Flickr site for their broadcast.

I wrote to the broadcaster, and they denied any wrongdoing. They claimed that I provided them with verbal permission to use my photography. I did no such thing. Furthermore, the images that were broadcast appear to be screencaps of the images since only my "friends" have access to my full-resolution images.

I then appealed to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, who just today released their ruling on the matter.

The decision can be found here: cbsc.ca/english/decisions/2008/080509.php
Posted at 8:48AM, 8 May 2008 PDT (permalink)