To put it simply, Gap messed up. I looked into this a bit more because the article didn't give out enough specifics to go either way. The photographer did publish this picture on Flickr, but he did so with some rights reserved. He published the work on the sites Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license. This means that the user of the photo has to give credit to the photographer, which they didn't, can not sell the image in anyway, which they did, and can not alter the image, which they also did. If you look at the image on the shirt compared to the original photo anyone can see that they are identical, minus the alterations done by Gap. The only thing that could through this case out is the fact that you can tell that this is the man's picture and be 99% sure, but there is still that 1% that could ruin it. A watermark on the photo could have prevented this and made for a iron clad case against Gap, even though I kind of think its already pretty solid. In the classroom you just have to pay attention. On sites like Flickr it gives the specifics on what can be done. In the class you could use this picture with correct attribution and I understand that for education purposes you can transform the image but since the publisher specifically published it without this available then you have to keep it the same.
You are correct. In a business context this is a violation, although it probably would not be in a classroom use. Again, though, since the designers were in India prosecution of the case was difficult. I believe I recall that there may ultimately have been some resolution with the photographer for an undisclosed settlement.
ReplyDelete