September 2, 2009

Shame on you!

On August 30, I discovered to my very unpleasant surprise that photos of quilts who were part of the exhibition of the OEQC 2009, had been published on-line for sale since April 29 and could be bought in several formats and at rates ranging from 1.50 Euro to 315,00 Euro. One of the photos on-line was of my quilt Flora's Feathers.

For documentation purposes I made several screenshots of the photos of my quilt including selling rates and the publishing date, by using the Ctrl Alt PrtScr key combinations and saving the pictures as JPG on my hard disk.
According to the publishing date, the photos of the quilts were made before the opening of the exhibition of the Open European Championships, at the exhibition place.

Yes, I did sign a Dutch application form for this exhibition in which I agreed that the photo I was asked to supply for, could be used for publication (catalogue) and promotion.

And no, I did not sign anything in which I agreed that a photo of my quilt, made by some one else during the time that this quilt was at the exhibition place, could be used for profit without my knowledge.

I do know now after being professionally informed, that this was probably copyright infringement by:
  • the organisation of the event who did not ask permission for publishing new pictures of my art in full size.
  • the photographer who is responsible for asking permission from me, the artist, before putting the photos on-line for publishing or for sale.
After informing the site who gave the opportunity for this on-line publishing and sale, the entrance to the photos was secured with a password and the photographer informed about this action, according to the site's Notice-and-Takedown procedure.

I really feel honoured if pictures are taken of my quilts during exhibitions and are shown to others for joy, even through the internet.
But shame on you when you publish these pictures, or give the opportunity to do so, to make money out of it without a legal permission!

Living in the Netherlands I am not familiar with international laws regarding infringement of copyright and making profit without consenting the maker of any intellectual or artistic property and I am very curious what the laws are in other countries regarding this subject.
I have many questions regarding this subject, like: which law protects my intellectual property, if I submit an original designed quilt to an exhibition in another country than the one I am living in?

2 comments:

  1. I agree shame on them for taking photos and "selling" them. As I have periodically been a photographer/report at quilt shows, and gained early access to take photos, the professional aspect is to take photos and "report" for PR purposes only....not to sell. I hope the quilt show hosts will track down whomever took these photos and posted them for sale, to where they get blacklisted from being able to attend any quilt shows in the future.

    So sorry.

    SewCalGal
    www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is a terrible thing to happen. I am nor sure how copyright works in different countries but I would be very surprised if this did not breach the laws of all countries.

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