[LINK] Oz: 'Virgin backs down on ads'

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 09:13:53PM +1000, Roger Clarke wrote:
> The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, based at the University of NSW, 
> yesterday condemned Virgin Mobile's use of the Flickr images, 
> especially those involving people aged under 18.
> 
> "They should just respect their moral rights under copyright ... and 
> go ask them like they would anyone else," the centre's executive 
> director, David Vaile, said.

As much as I agree that what Virgin has done here is inexcusable, this
statement simply doesn't make sense.  The photographers of these images
have selected to give anyone a right to use these photos for any use that
they desire - they did this by selecting the to license them under the
Creative Commons license.  The company using them has no "moral right"
to ask them for permission for the photos to be used any more than you
have a moral right for asking someone if you can use a piece of public
domain software.

The real issue here is not around the use of the photos as such (with the
exception of one image, which may not have been under the commercial
use Creative Commons license at the time it was used), but the fact that
they used the photos without having a model release for the people _in_
the photos, which is outright illegal in Australia - regardless of what
license the photos are covered by.


Based on comments made by many of the photographers involved it's clear
that many of them didn't realise what they were actually doing when they
selected to license their photos under the Creative Commons License
(especially the commercial-use version of it), but that in itself is
hardly Virgin Mobiles fault...

  Scott.