Our mainstream print media is now making it a habit to steal images from Flickr or blogs and use it for free without leaving any proper credits to the original photographer. I have been tracking such incidents right from the day my picture had been stolen and used by a book publisher.
Here is a summary of copyright infringement in the recent past.
Mridula was on a flight from Delhi to Bangalore and while flipping the pages of airline magazine she had found a photo taken by her used in their featured article. No credits were given.
I was browsing through the book review section of Mathrubhumi weekly and found out that one of my photos were used for a book cover. The person who stole the photo did not leave any credit to me.
The same person, Shanavas M A (of Madhyamam weekly), had stolen a Canadian citizen’s picture to use in the cover for Madhyamam. And this seems to be a regular practice of Mr. Shanavas and Madhymam.
Haree had to face the same situation when Madhyamam (again) used one of his photos for an article of their supplement.
Hindustan Times stole a photo taken by Nita and published it in their newspaper without any due credits.
Twilight Fairy found out that her photo was used by Times of India and when contacted she got an arrogant response.
Seema also had to face the same where Times of India becomes the culprit once again.
The latest victim is Sreenidhi whose photo has been flicked off by Times of India.
This is such a bad situation that the mainstream print media houses are showing such ignorance towards image copyright. They need to be held responsible and dragged to courts. High time that we have stricter copyright laws.
(Image courtesy: Seema K K)