Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Graphics Government Software The Almighty Buck The Courts News

Graphical Manipulation - Beheaded and Sold? 40

Posted by Cliff from the identity-frog dept.
popdookey asks: "Can a known image of me be beheaded and marketed as someone else without my permission? I just returned home to Georgia and discovered that my head had been replaced on a favorite photograph that was now being used to promote sandwiches. It was a great photo of a few of the old-time employees and founders of a very successful restaurant franchise taken in front of its original location. The faces of the employees have been replaced with those of the wealthy but absent owners to create a more marketable and nostalgic image. It is great advertising, but 92.3% of that body is mine as was 100% of its contribution. Is this legal without my permission, and if so, wouldn't this lead to historical fraud?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Graphical Manipulation - Beheaded and Sold? More

Graphical Manipulation - Beheaded and Sold?

Comments Filter:
  • Except for the one I was about to post.
    amarodeeps asks:
    I've had reconstructive surgery more than five times in the last two years, owing to an episode of explosive diarrhea gone bad (I'm a competitive explosive diarrhea vaulter, ranked twelfth in the world). Yesterday, I found out that my left cheek (not that cheek!) was used by a doctor in an ad to promote his plastic surgery practice. Is this legal? Should I be getting royalties? How should I approach this, do I need a lawyer? Should I really be asking this question on ask slashdot in the first place?? Thanks!

  • For the most part, whoever took the picture, owns it.

    Those paparazzi guys make a killing selling photos to the Enquirer and other tabloids.
    • Nope. Generally you need a model release for professional photography. If this guy didn't give one, then these people shouldn't have used this photo for any public distribution. Case closed. What a stupid question. Why ask here and not go to a lawyer?

      • Re:Correct me if I am wrong, but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @10:48AM (#8736395) Journal
        IAAPPAIKTIAAFJ (I Am A Professional Photographer And I Know This Is An April Fools Joke)

        Yes, you have to have a model release in order to use someone's likeness for commercial purposes. However, they have to be identifiable. Since the guy's head is removed, he's not identifiable, so there's no legal violation.

        Examples: I can take a photo of you and publish it on my personal website. I cannot take a photo of you and publish it on my business website (korphoto.com [korphoto.com] if you're interested :) ) as an advertisement (implicitly or explicitly). I can take a photo of you such that you are unidentifiable (from behind, cropped to remove your head, silhouetted, etc) and use that for commercial purposes or in advertising.
        • One of the exceptions is the "public place" law. Take & post all the pics you want at a parade, the mall, etc.
        • well,

          whatabout all those paparazzi pix taken with ultra-long lenses. The celebrati hardly released those pictures, and they were harldy taken in a public place.

          So is a public place any place where you can be seen from without tresspassing (or perhaps not even that restriction), or printing in a tabloid not a commercial use?
          • News photos don't count...that's that whole "freedom of the press" thing. As crappy as they are, those tabloids bill themselves as newspapers. So long as what they publish is truthful, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, it's legal. That doesn't stop them from getting sued all the time, though.
      • What a stupid question. Why ask here
        Why ask why? Check the date -- you've been trolled.

  • I can help.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @10:24AM (#8736140) Homepage Journal
    ...if you let me know how you found out precisely 92.3% of you was on this modified picture...

    I love computers!

  • Hi. I'm Troy McClure (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 01, 2004 @10:25AM (#8736147)
    Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such headless TV advertisements as "Don't Stand Up at Cedar Point" and "Sleepy Hollow Mattress Sale This Weekend"

  • face it pal (Score:4, Funny)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @10:25AM (#8736153) Homepage Journal
    all your head shots are belong to us

  • simple (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ashish Kulkarni ( 454988 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @10:29AM (#8736191) Homepage
    If the person who owns the copyright to the photo (that's NOT you, it's the person who took it) disagrees with it, then you can sue the offender. Else, you have to face the consequences ;-)
    • Copyright is one concern, but people do have certain rights to their own images. Generally, photographers have people sign releases when they want to user their images in commerce. That may be necessary even if only the body is used.
  • but I can't even begin to make sense of this.

    I'll try reading it again at lunch.

  • You should talk to a lawyer (Score:5, Informative)

    by aburnsio.com ( 213397 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @11:41AM (#8736945)
    According to a FindLaw primer on employee rights, you may have an action to sue your former employer for using your photograph without your permission. You should contact an employment lawyer in your area; you might be able to get a settlement from your former company to justly compensate you for your photo being used without permission.

    Key questions you need to answer:

    1) Did you sign a written consent form allowing the company to use your photograph?

    2) Do you have the original photograph to use as evidence that you are in fact the one in the picture?

    3) Do you have current contact information for the other employees in the photograph that have been similarly misused?

    4) Do you know when the ads first appeared, how long they have been running, and in what medium (newspaper, TV, magazines, web, etc.)?

    5) Do you have samples of the advertisment in question that could be used as evidence?

    6) What jurisdiction applies? If the ad was shown in California you may have more protections for use of your photograph; Georgia only appears to have such restrictions for serious crimes like child pornography.

    Your action does not concern "fraud", per se. Fraud, legally, is decieving others for gain. What you need to focus on is the state statues that require an employee to provide written consent before that employee's photograph can be used for marketing purposes.

    For more details, see a general discussion on the issue from FindLaw [findlaw.com]:

    Many states prohibit employers from using an employee's photograph for commercial purposes (such as in an advertisement or in a company brochure) without your written consent. Cases have been won by female employees who discovered their likeness on such materials but did not authorize their employers to use them.

    For instance, see California Civil Code Section 3344-3346 [findlaw.com]. I'll quote a small portion of this section which directly applies to your situation:

    3344. (a) Any person who knowingly uses another's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services, without such person's prior consent, or, in the case of a minor, the prior consent of his parent or legal guardian, shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof. In addition, in any action brought under this section, the person who violated the section shall be liable to the injured party or parties in an amount equal to the greater of seven hundred fifty dollars ($750) or the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the unauthorized use, and any profits from the unauthorized use that are attributable to the use and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages.

    The company is likely to argue that, because your head is not visible, you cannot be readily identified under 3344(b)(2):

    (1) A person shall be deemed to be readily identifiable from a photograph when one who views the photograph with the naked eye can reasonably determine that the person depicted in the photograph is the same person who is complaining of its unauthorized use.

    The company may also insist that your likeness is not "essential" to the advertisement, per 3344(c):

    (c) Where a photograph or likeness of an employee of the person using the photograph or likeness appearing in the advertisement or other publication prepared by or in behalf of the user is only incidental, and not essential, to the purpose of the publication in which it appears, there shall arise a rebuttable presumption affecting the burden of producing evidence that the fai

    • Fantastic information. Thanks. Your key questions point me in the right direction. My answers: 1. No 2. It's in the owner's office; his mom took the picture 3. Yes 4. Yes 5. Yes 6. Georgia and Alabama. I'll have to see if some of the same provisions exist in Georgia's civil code. Regarding your suggestion of contacting the company: I actually stopped by and visited one of the original founders at their Athens, GA corporate office. He apologized for doing it and gave me two t-shirts. Note: he had ver

  • Get over it, Jared. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lendrick ( 314723 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @11:50AM (#8737087) Homepage Journal
    I just returned home to Georgia and discovered that my head had been replaced on a favorite photograph that was now being used to promote sandwiches.

    The terms of your contract specifically state that we can use your likeness in any way we want, including photoshopping some other dude's head onto your body.

    Thank you,
    The Subway Legal Department
  • ...and expected a real answer? All we give is sarcasm!

    On that note, who's to say that he didn't improve the picture?
  • If your face can't be made out in a photo it can legally be used. It applies to you as the subject or you in a crowd. As long as your face is not displayed or distinguishable, it's okay to use as long as the photographer gave permission to use it even though you know it's your body. IANAL though so check with one.

  • Likenesses are protected (Score:4, Interesting)

    by torinth ( 216077 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @12:11PM (#8737349) Homepage
    You are generally protected from your likeness being used for commercial promotion purposes. This is largely to protect you from unwillingly becoming the spokesperson for a Herpes treatment. However, if they chopped off your head, I bet you'll have a hard time saying that it's your likeness.

    The fallback argument is that whoever took the original picture holds copyright, and the head-chopping promoters may not have secured rights properly. Track down the photographer and see if they knowingly released the photograph to these people.
  • A possible related precedent. A few years ago, Ford Europe ran an ad campaign which featured some genuine employees from their UK plant. Later, they decided to repeat the same ad campaign in Poland. Rather than take a new photograph, they used the old one. But, since Poland has very few ethnic minority workers, they retouched all the black and Indian employees to white. The stink which blew up was massive, and they had to back down and apologise grovellingly. Which suggests that someone thinks that you have

    • Re:Possible precedent (Score:3, Informative)

      by Andy_R ( 114137 )
      "the cost of taking a new photo with Polish employees would have been trivial"

      I'm guessing you have never hired a professional photographer?

      I figure 3 days for the trip to Poland, 100+ shots of large-format film stock, add in airfare plus shipping costs for lighting and cameras, living expenses for photographer and assistant(s), disruption to plant while you pick out 50 employees and get them to pose, plus buy-out on the rights for the image(s) that you high-res scan and digitally comp together to get a f
      • and you'll be lucky to have change from $30,000.

        To a company the size of Ford, that is trivial. Figure their profit on the sale of a new car is (to pick a number out of the air) $1000. If the offense they generated by cheaping out loses just thirty sales, worldwide, then they're behind what it would have cost to do it right.

  • My advice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @01:07PM (#8737993) Homepage Journal
    Get a laugh out of it, then let it drop.

    Otherwise you are going to have to get a lawyer, and consider what you could win (if anything) in a court of law. It's probably not going to be worth your while, the most likely thing is that they'll stop using that photo or photoshop in a completely different body. How does that benefit you? What will you get out of the whole affair other than wasting a few months of your precious time?

    Personally, I think there are upsides to this. Suppose this chain becomes the next KFC, you'll have a funny story to tell out of the whole situation, which is probably more than you'll end up with by hiring a lawyer. Hell, I'd probably send them a letter mentionining I'd saw the photo and telling them it's Ok with me as long as they don't use my face.

    For one thing think of the pickup lines, "I don't know about you, Ali's Felafel Pit really wanted my body."
    • Very practical advice and insight. Living in Hawaii will make it hard to take legal action in Georgia.

      It seems like such a dangerous precedent that I decided to bounce the issue off of the collective slashdot knowledgebase first. Reading the comments leads me to believe that I should have given my permission first.

      It is not my intention to gain anything from this. It is my intention to learn what can be done, if anything, to keep it from happening to me or others again. The potential to revise/abuse p
  • Take the headshot of the person in question, nab a picture of a weight-loss candidate in a bikini/speedo.

    Cut/Paste, print with a good inkjet, and at night post the new picture on their window...

Slashdot Top Deals

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan

Close