Another Fair Use/Copyright Infringement Lawsuit for Virgin Media

For the second time in as many months Virgin mobile is getting burned for their use of an underage girl's picture in an advertisement in Australia, which they never asked her if they could use. We already covered it once before in this blog. The 16 year old girl had no idea that she was a part of the Virgin campaign until she discovered a photo of the advertisement on Flickr where the original was posted to start. Not only did they not have the proper releases but the girl is underage.

You can see CNN's coverage of the teen's family suing Virgin Mobile for using her picture, posted on Flickr.com, in an ad campaign here as they go over the issues of the Fair Use vs. Copyright Infringement.

Is this just a ploy to get even more media attention for Virgin Media and then pay out a small penalty to the owner of the photo and the girl represented in it. Poeple are now talking about the ad which is a major coup in itself for Virgin Mobile. Also this is the second time in two months. You would think they are not that stupid and would learn their lesson. I think their has to be other motives or they are trying/hoping to redefine how you can use creative commons licensing in commercials works. I wonder where Flickr stands on all this. Here is a link to their Coyright and Infringement policy.

"Yahoo! respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same. Yahoo! has no responsibility for content on other web sites that you may find or access when using Yahoo!’s products or services. Material available on or through other web sites may be protected by copyright and the intellectual property laws of the United States and/or other countries. The terms of use of those web sites, and not the Yahoo! Terms of Service, govern your use of that material.

It is Yahoo!’s policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who may infringe or repeatedly infringe the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of Yahoo! and/or others."


Looks like Yahoo doesnt want to touch this issue with a ten foot a pole.

Is Virgin Mobile trying to hide behind Fair Use even when they are using the picture for commercial purposes? And shouldn't they have at least contacted the girl before they used the photo even under creative commons? They did put the URL in the credits of the advertisement but is that enough and is this the future of licensing? All very interesting questions and goes to show you how gray this area of usage, copyright infringement and fair use is. Bottom line: Be very careful with what you upload to the Internet.


UPDATE: Here is a related link from the NYTimes.