PRACTICE MARKETING blog

I am very ardently pro-copyright… I’m in the Intellectual Property business, after all. And you should be too (both points).

I find this funny at first blush; but it is very alarming: Apparently, Virgin used a Creative Commons picture of a young woman in this advert (Australia). It was kind of making fun of her (with the Virgin pun, no less).

The picture was taken from Flickr, seemingly under the ‘appropriate’ commercial rights, and altered (mirrored). But the young woman (nor her family) was NOT involved in the decision-making process, were NOT notified, or compensated.

It seems that the young woman never granted rights to her image, but rather ‘a friend’ did — possibly without understand the full possible consequence. (I guess he never figured her friend would be plastered all over Australia tongue-in-cheek.) Her family is apparently suing Virgin, as I came to know through the AdFreak blog.

The comments from the young woman displayed in the ad, her brother (filmmaker), and other interested bloggers are well worth the read. You may like to add your 2.0 cents.

FYI: Creative Commons - half search engine; half standard creator - allows image-makers to create less-than “All rights reserved” images to be used in a variety of ways; commercial usage is explicitly stated (or denied). It’s a useful image resource for designers, et al. when used properly and ethically.