If you are a good photographer and active on websites like Flickr, don’t be surprised if you open the newspaper one morning and find a photograph taken by you published without your permission. In today’s digital age, all that a magazine/newspaper’s designer has to do is randomly search Flickr/Google Photos to find an image to match the story, right click, save to his/her computer and use in the publication. It cannot get simpler, right?

Now supposing you are a victim of such unethical behaviour. There are couple of things that could happen:

• You become excited that a photograph taken by you has been published. You have never considered yourself good enough, but since you are on cloud 9, you are ready to forgive the publishers for not giving credits. You show the newspaper/magazine to all your friends and feel proud. After all, your interest in photography was limited only to sharing photos with friends and family. Now with a published photograph, you feel special because you imagine that your talent has been recognized.
• You are angry that someone ’stole’ your photograph. You want to take legal action but you are not sure how to proceed. You write to the editor but s/he ignores you. You voice your opinion in your blog/forum and hound the editor for a while but eventually nothing happens and you give up. After all, taking the legal course is lengthy and expensive. You are still angry but the state of affairs forces you to move on.
• You are angry and you don’t give up easily. You keep calling/writing to the publication house (the editor is always hard to reach) until they agree to take action. After repeated attempts, you are heard. The editor apologizes to you and agrees to pay you for the photograph. Of course, the editor will not pay you any more than they pay their regular staff photographers. You agree and ask the editor how much you will get paid. Once he tells you the amount, you are shocked. The amount will be most likely be less than how much you spent on phone calls to the editor. Yes, that is how low the staff photographers are paid. You tell the editor to keep the money and shake your head in disgust.

I apologize if I have made the situation look bleak. But all the scenarios above have been borrowed from real life incidents. The truth is that here in India, such things are taken for granted by the new eager-to-sell publishing houses and most likely circumstances will force the victim to give up fighting. Taking legal action for such trivial matters here in India is very impractical. If/when you call the publishing house, you will most likely be put on hold or asked to call later (in an effort to discourage you from calling again). And believe me, the number of unethical publishers are on the rise. I have heard of publishing houses like The Times of India, Bangalore Mirror, Andhra Jyothi, Prajavaani, all indulging in such unethical behaviour. You can read about a few real life incidents here, here and here. If such publications have no standards, can we believe the stuff they publish?

If you are a victim of such theft, here are a few things you can do:

• Call up or write to the editor and demand a clarification. If you are writing, give a time period within which you expect a reply. Don’t give up if the editor does not respond. If required, visit the publication house and speak to the concerned people directly.
• Don’t threaten legal action if you are not serious about it. If you are serious, consult a lawyer first and then proceed with your actions. However, threatening to publicize the incident (and hence defame the publication) sometimes is more effective than threatening legal action.
• Nevertheless, write about such incidents in forums and blogs. Show adequate proof in the form of scanned copies of the news piece/article and keep copies. Make the general public and fellow photographers aware of such dishonourable behaviour.
• At the least, demand a clarification/apology to be published in subsequent issues to set the record straight and give you the credit you deserve.

Although not always possible, refrain from posting large sized uncopyrighted photos on websites like Flickr. If doing so, clearly state that the photo is copyrighted and cannot be re-used without permission. I know it is easy to crop copyright watermarks and perform tricks  in Photoshop to remove all traces of the original work, but small steps like this are important. Alternately, use your own webspace to host your photos and use Flash galleries wherein the option to right-click and save an image is not available.

I can put myself in the shoes of a person whose photograph has been published without permission and understand how it feels but I would like to close with a different thought. As much as like to believe that only bad guys steal (or the guys who steal are bad), I think most of us are partners in a different crime in one way or the other. I am sure 90% of the photographers in India use pirated software, buy their gear in the gray market or import stuff from the US without paying import duties. I am not trying to bring disgrace to any person or profession, but I am reminding my fellow Indians that deep down in side, we are all law breakers in one way or the other. The question then becomes – do our actions affect any one individual (like in case of stealing someone’s photograph) or do they affect a larger, sometimes more corrupt institution (like the Government or large corporations who charge exorbitantly for their products). These questions are highly debatable and a different topic altogether, but for now, let us just remember that the WWW is a big bad place.