Sunday, July 20, 2008

Councillor Caught Up In Copyright Claim

by Isle of Thanet Gazunder Crime Reporter Dud Fivers

Kent County Councillor and cabinet member Kevin Lynes has been accused of copyright theft by one of the isle's most popular bloggers. Celebrity millionaire Richard Eastcliff, who runs Thanet's Eastcliff Richard website, was shocked to see one of his photos appear without permission or a credit on the Conservative councillor's blog recently.

'I clicked on a link from Tony Flaig's Bignews Margate site to Kevin Lynes' blog and there was my photo of Droit House, which I took on 12 May this year. I was devastated as I'd put a lot of time and effort into twiddling my f-stop to capture the right mood for that particular shot. The photo on his site even has the same file name as mine - 'droit+house'. You'd think a KCC cabinet member would know better than to blag other people's copyrighted material off the internet.'

Mr Lyne, who represents Pembury, Sherwood and St James in West Kent, had been on a KCC cabinet fact-finding tour to Margate earlier this week, their first visit to the East Kent resort since 1926, and used the photo to illustrate his article. A furious Mr Eastcliff added: 'You'd think the Tories would be all in favour of law and order. Couldn't the cheapskate have bought a camera and taken his own photos?'

Mr Eastcliff, 29, said he would now be consulting with his media lawyers.

Can you spot the difference?


Councillor Lynes' blog 15 July

Update: Cllr Lynes has now apologised for his, er, error. Click here to read his email.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

No!

Richard Eastcliff said...

Yes!

Anonymous said...

Maybe he took the same photo from the same angle a few seconds after you (or before you) and you didn't notice and then called it the same file name? Incredible!!

Richard Eastcliff said...

Yes, and then he cropped it and Photoshopped it exactly the same way. Remarkable!

Anonymous said...

You are the victim of a gip oh dear.

Anonymous said...

I think Peter Checksfield should be on the lookout in case his art work is compromised too.

Anonymous said...

Blimey, both taken at the same time!!!

Tony Flaig said...

If I might step into this controversy. Your photograph looks very similar to this one here copyright Tony Flaig.

I therefore suggest you brief your lawyers on plagerism

Peter C said...

*Nudity Warning*

Anon 9:06 PM, my website has already been copied! Here's my site:

http://www.nakedinthanet.com/

And then there's this:

http://mrjyn.blogspot.com/2007/11/haunt-busgirl-into-bed-albinism-rub.html

Bizarrely, there's been some sort of weird spell-check (Checksfield is Sixfold, Ramsgate is Ramjet, Jemma is Jemima), & perhaps more weird, all the links go direct to my website proper! I'm still not entirely sure whether the site is meant as some sort of tribute to my work or they've deliberately ripped me off, but the person behind it almost certainly doesn't understand English (I wouldn't dare suggest that the Chinese are responsible though!).

Anonymous said...

You should consult local curly-haired Tory councillor Ewen Cameron. He threw a hysterical fit earlier in the year about Tory snaps that were re-used on a local blog allegedly without permission. I'm sure he would be just as keen to blow off about a Tory transgressor. Having said that, he hasn't appeared on any local blogs for some months, so...

Anonymous said...

Peter, thats weird. I've just spent an hour looking at both websites. Unfortunately Mrs. R. did not believe me when I told her I was looking at them for research, damn internet history.

Anonymous said...

Peter should also check www. mingersinmonkton.com I think there might be copyright issues there to

Anonymous said...

Plagerism? Isn't it plagiarism? Or have we got a new Fannit disease?

Anonymous said...

So if the elephant's arse featured by Tony Flaig originated as a still (whilst the subject was in a public area) from Peter Miles Northdown estate surveillance cameras ?

Then processed by Thanet Tory Printing Services a la Cyril

Then plagiarized by Mr Flaig

We should get Bertie on the case.

"The originating issue is 1983 and the ongoing question the absence of a coach in the Northdown House Coach House. Mr Miles after his usual Yes No Interlude decided Yes he would have CCTV recording images from adjoining public areas. A breach of every passing elephant's rights.

We should not forget the important pachyderm wallowing rights issues at Manston concerning poisoning of our water wells."

Councillor Greg the Peg dismisses Bertie's elephant's arse and coach museum and water supply submission as "Berties usual Wells Farrago"

Tony Flaig said...

I went to school in fannit, Charlie Dicks as it happens, and in those days the standards were fairly dire.

I must add that's in my opinion and certainly there were some outstanding teachers.

So on the spelling front yes I meant plagiarism, not some exotic disease.

The point is I reckon having seen my photo Mr Eastcliff has benn inspired to take his photo of Droit House, the only difference he has taken his from a slightly different location and angle, apart from that its almost identical.

Michael Child said...

Just a thought here if someone embeds one of your images or videos on their website rather than copying it and hosting the image file on their own website, this puts you in the position where you can change the image to one they wouldn’t necessarily want.

Could be a lot more effective and a lot less expensive than litigation for breach of copyright.

Richard Eastcliff said...

I like the way you're thinking, Michael! I wonder if, instead of a nice piccie of Margate front, you could arrange it so they get a nice piccie of a different sort of front, maybe from Peter's site!

Anonymous said...

Oooh how cheeky, but i like it?

Peter C said...

Go ahead ECR / Michael! : )

Michael Child said...

Richard Peter there are two issues here the first one is that you can’t do it once the perpetrator has removed the image, so telling them defeats the object. The other is that you have to host your images on your own website so you can use an ftp program to replace it with a different picture with the same file name. I often use the following and should warn you that it has adult content.
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/00f56700.jpg Like both of you I only expect a mention and yes being asked is nice.

If you lack the technical facilities to do this I can always host any image files for you that you feel are particularly susceptible so than can be adjusted at a later date, the results can be amusing.

Anonymous said...

We're into nasty technical grounds now. It looks to me that he did not copy it but hotlink to it. Technically linking to something is not theft. It's your (and my and everyone's) browser that then gets the image and displays it but I'm guessing the HTML simply pointed to your image.

Hotlinking is considered rude when you don't buy the bandwidth for the image and [theft/abuse/fraud] of resources (computer misuse act) if you pay for it. Not attributing the image could be costrued as an attempt to claim copyright (which would be a copyright violation) but to make anything stick you'd need a budget.

(I'm not a solicitor, I make no clams about etc etc)

Personally I think the email you got is quite the result - enough said, like.

I often put a notice requiring attribution creative commons have a fully easy way to apply a license under your own terms to make it clear what is needed to use your work.

http://creativecommons.org/license/

All-in-all it shows that you are a good photographer.