What do you call taking a picture from a website without permission?
In legal terms, it’s known as “infringement of intellectual property”.
In everyday language? Stealing.
That’s what Singapore Press Holdings site www.omy.sg seems to have done to Red Sports. The photo was also used on the front page of the May 15th edition of Lianhe Wanbao (see screen shot below). A second photo was also ripped from the site and used for the story.
SPH is the company that publishes most of Singapore’s newspapers, like The Straits Times, The New Paper and Lianhe Zaobao. It reported $1.3 billion in topline revenue for the financial year 2008.
One of our volunteers spotted the report below on www.news.omy.sg. See the picture? Doesn’t it look exactly like the Red Sports picture, also shown below? (UPDATE ON 11 AUGUST 2009 10.56AM – We noticed that the picture has just been removed from the www.news.omy.sg website. But you can see the evidence in the screen shot below.)
As if taking the picture isn’t bad enough, they covered their tracks by cropping off the copyright watermark – “© REDSPORTS.SG” – from the bottom right of the picture. They gave information about the date of the picture, the context of the picture but – oh, my! – failed to mention where the picture came from.
What part of “© REDSPORTS.SG” did they not understand? (© is the universally accepted symbol that stands for copyright)
The photo was taken by Marvin Lowe, a Red Sports volunteer, who confirmed that Omy did not at any time seek his permission to use the photo. Neither did they ask us. We would have rejected them outright because of the intended use of the photo.
Given the circumstances of the story, we think the infringement is especially vile. A young girl died tragically. Was OMY so eager to give a face to the story that they would stoop so low as to rip off someone else’s picture?
At the bottom of the www.omy.sg website, there is a line that says: SPH Copyright ©
The double standard.
They would never do it to Reuters, to Associated Press, or to Agence France Presse (AFP) to whom they have to pay millions in fees to have the right to publish their pictures.
Those agencies are owned by foreigners who will sue them for copyright infringement. But to rip off a small site run by a Singaporean? Sure, why not.
This is not the the first time an organisation has taken Red Sports pictures without permission. We usually give infringements the benefit of the doubt but a professionally-run, billion-dollar media giant like Singapore Press Holdings?
No excuse.
The www.news.omy.sg report.
A close-up of the picture in question.
The photo that appeared on Red Sports that was taken by a Red Sports volunteer. Identical, yes? And the copyright watermark, © REDSPORTS.SG? They cropped it off. The picture was originally posted as photo 22 of a story about a netball game between Sports School and MGS. (Photo © Marvin Lowe/Red Sports)
“We wonder what used to be there…” The stolen picture has since been removed within 24 hours of this post going up. We DID NOT ask them to take it down. However, it’s still on the world wide web. This begs the question: “If you remove the picture you stole, did you steal?” Discuss in no more than 500 words. Winning essay gets lunch from the Red Sports crew.
SPH also used the photo on the front page of Lianhe Wanbao as well (bottom right, black and white picture). The picture was repeated in the inside page and a SECOND photo was also ripped off from our site. Lianhe Wanbao stated the photo was taken from Red Sports, making it seem like we agreed to it. We DID NOT agree and WOULD NOT have sold them the picture given the story.
REDpoll
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some comments here are stupid.
redsports is here to share the singapore sports story – whether t is a good or bad story.
in a way, letting ppl use your pictures is a way of sharing.
look at it this way, if a big organisation takes ur pictures to use, it shows that u are doing things better than them, its a compliment.
why get upset over it? the photographer should be honoured that a big organisation wants to steal his picture anyway.
my advice, let it go and make peace. no point turning everyone against sph, they are just too big.
it is my personal opinion, so please do not get offended.
cheers
tony R
I like Zaphod Beeblebrox idea .. Haha .. Just send them an invoice.
Just read in the news that the court has dismissed a case against SPH. It is about Al-Amin nursery suing them for damages. Reason, the judge sees the report as having no effect to the nursery.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/419567/1/.html
Taking down a stolen picture does not mean they did not do it, well 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Just because they are SPH, does not give them a right to just take something without asking. Marvin actually spent time and effort in taking and editing the pictures, they just come here and steal it, to think the company spend money to hire people to pilgerize bravo bravo.
Sue them all. Get some good IP lawyer like Adrian Tan at Drew & Napier to poke fun at them until they pay you… In the meantime, you have to get the lawyer to draft a notice informing them that they have infringed your copyright and must make restitution.
Well.. They probably think that they can get away with it. Given the need to find photo of the person in the news in a tight deadline, they do not have the time to seek permission from you. There are many times whereby they uses picture on the net for every other thing. Why not just send them an invoice charging them for the usage of the pic, think they will gladly pay.
Again, we are told to “move on” when the big brother is found to be the guilty party.
Did they “move on” when they caught some small fishes?
Big – can do wrong.
Small – cannot do wrong.
So much for “Based on justice and equality”
so if i go to your house to steal something. ull let me go? even though u caught me? thanks!
Hi,
Let it go. What’s done is finished. Let’s move on.
Thanks!
Cheers,
Wen Shih
You should get your lawyers to write to their lawyers. The least they can do is:
– offer a public apology
– compensate your volunteer photographer
– take disciplinary action towards that errant reporter
That is of course assuming they are a publication with some integrity.
@ DK, whether they cropped or not is irrelevant. According to Singapore’s copyright rules, the rights to a picture are owned by its creator, and permission is needed to use it unless the creator indicates otherwise. “Merely acknowledging the source when one uses the work is insufficient.” The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore website below has more info.
http://www.ipos.gov.sg/leftNav/cop/Ownership+and+Rights.htm
In short, it is NOT alright.
Caught in the act. I have no doubt that if the boot were on the other foot, Redsports would find itself looking at some quick-fire litigation.
Personally, I think it is alright to use the picture. BUT it is not alright to crop away the watermark and not state the source.
It’s upsetting to see such things happening. The photographer should take action against the printed newspaper since it was his work!
So what would SPH do (if this happened to them)?
Lawsuit, anyone?
just to let everyone know, it’s not just omy.sg that ran it. I did a little more digging and realized that they first published the photo on wanbao.
http://blog.omy.sg/wbnews/2009/05/13/13052009-%E5%8F%8C%E5%B0%81%E9%9D%A2/
The authors of this article are no freelancers. They are full time journalist with wanbao.
An official apology is in order. Even if the article and pic were submitted by freelancers, it’s still the responsibility of the paper and SPH to ensure they were ‘clean’. I think it’s doing a lot of injustice to the redsports crew if left unchecked.
This is very odd, leh …
When you compose text and images for a web page, the web designer has to handle the image. He/she must have seen the copyright watermark. He/she must have to use a graphic software to crop away the watermark. There is no automatic procedure to crop away the watermark, it must be done manually.
So, full knowledge of the existence of the watermark is there.
Either the web designer did it without approval or his/her superior approved the use of copyrighted image. But the web designer should know better…
This is not right. You should write in to SPH to seek an explanation and apology.
Hi, I am an avid reader of Red Sports and your coverage on local sports is commendable. As a freelance columnist for Mypaper, it is possible that the writers are not professional and the editor did not verify the sources. Omy aims to give timely news and banks on citizen journalism so your copyright is infringed. Perhaps you can email SPH and they will take the photo down or credit the photo to your site. Hope this helps.
Hi Les,
Wow … That is so cruel. I think the article writer is not a professional? Maybe a freelancer or volunteer?
Maybe you could try writing in to SPH and ask for their comments. I think you are eligible to sue but be careful because they can take a look at your website and see if any of your articles contain copyrighted materials too. Remember NKF? Anyway, this would not hurt them a bit unless this matter is brought up in forums such as HWZ or SGClub. Maybe when the community takes notice then they will compensate you.
@addymuliady: I doubt we have any copyrighted materials from them. Why? We don’t publish anything on Red Sports from anybody without permission. We don’t go to people’s blogs and take stories or pictures. If people want to share, they explicitly write to us, then we post.
There was this one time when a St Andrew’s supporter sent me pictures of a Saints rugby game. I didn’t ask who took the pictures and posted them up.
The actual photographer emailed me to say we didn’t ask for his permission.
I was horrified and apologised and asked him if he would like us to take them down. He graciously allowed us to keep them up.
From them on, I told myself we would never post any picture or story unless we could verify who the author or photographer was.
That’s our standard at Red Sports.
Notice how we credit the photographer for every picture? And every article credits the writer? We take pains in doing it because we try and respect everyone’s intellectual property. If there was a mistake, we correct it.
Our terms and conditions state that readers and volunteers who send us stories and pictures agree to give us a non-exclusive, non-royalty right to post their stories and pictures. All copyright of any story and picture belongs to the writer and photographer unless Red Sports has specifically paid for the work.