I thought it would be nice as a Dutch, to fight the windmills…
In Croatia there is still a massive abuse of copyrights. Although ZAMP managed to make some order within the music world, in the world of visual arts there is – sadly – less order.
As an artist I respect the rights of others: musicians, software, images and so on and I wished that ZAMP would have a division for visual arts as well.
One of my grooms is a lawyer for copyright, and he told me that the law is equal for music as for visual arts. The difference is only that you have to take care of it yourself. So, having a lawyer, it was no time to see copyright infringement.
It didn’t take long: here is a new wedding site, made by visual artists, with unauthorized usage of at least one image. Mine, that is.
And yes, the first step has been made, and yes, I keep you posted.
PS: more about Don Quixote on Wikipedia.
4 Comments
Ok, some follow up: I received a mail with apologies and one did not know those were my images and so on. Furthermore an offer for free usage of their site.
After feedback with my lawyer, he suggested I really had a good case and we can make a nice example here in Croatia.
Those who know me, know that I’d like to set an example
To be continued.
I forgot to tell you, the site pulled at least the images from their site.
Thanks god somebody is finally enforcing their rights. Copyright is a serious problem, not only in croatia but all over the world. People are rather confusing the notions of free informaton and right of the authors. Every personal creation if not otherwise specified is protected by default - let it be a scratch on the paper or a photo. Do go out there and set an example even if you do not want to
Rather surprising reaction from the website though…i would have expected something completely different…
Another thing that goes hand in hand with copyright is also the rights of people in the photos. Are the people that you are photographing signing a consent that their photos can be published without any restrictions? The rights of the photos are yours, true, even if a client pays the rights remain with you, however, i am not a lawyer but i am not sure you can pubkish it without the written consent from the people on the photo. This time we are getting into the personal data protection, what do you think?
Mitja
Mitja,
Regarding the rights of the persons, I do not know what the Croatian law says about this. I know that f.e. in the USA, in the (wedding)contract is written what a photographer can do (or not) with the images.
I have some couples, who do not want to be online for privacy reasons, I respect that, so those weddings will not be shown.
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[...] Here I told you that some company used my image without permission. Although this seems to happen a lot in Croatia, I thought enough is enough. I contacted the company and within one week we agreed on a reasonable settlement. [...]