Posted on Saturday 22 September 2007
This is quite an interesting case and highlights a flaw that can occur when people who use Creative Commons work.
A Texas family has sued Creative Commons after their teenaged daughter’s photo was used in an ad campaign for Virgin Mobile Australia. The photo had been taken by the girl’s youth counselor, who put it on Flickr, and chose a CC Attribution license, which allows for commercial use. Virgin did, in fact, attribute the photo to the photographer, fulfilling the terms of the license, but the family is still suing Virgin Mobile Australia and Creative Commons.
The photographer can license the work under CC (for comercial or non-comercial purposes) but that does not mean that the person in the photo has licensed their image to be used.
They should not be suing CC but instead Virgin Mobile because they failed to get permission from her to use her image.
I actually had this happen to me. An image was taken of me at HollyHock and the next year I went to the site to check out their programs I found out I was their new poster girl. I would have given them permission to use my image had they asked but they didn’t.
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