Now! (That’s What I Call) – Taking The P*ss 2008 February 2, 2008
Posted by greatarchitect in Viral Images.trackback
This is a long overdue post, and concerns a previous image on this blog, namely the Family Misfortunes image posted here (and on B3ta.com – HERE) on 22nd November 2007.
As always, its a really nice compliment when an image appears on the B3ta.com front page, and even nicer when some of the people react as well to an image as they did to this one. Going one stage further than that, it’s really nice if someone wants to use the image in a publication… If they ask.
As with the Spice Girls ‘viral’ image which appeared in ‘The Sun’ Newspaper last year, and the subsequent (and relatively speedy) Resolution the ‘Family Misfortunes’ image in question went ‘viral’, and appeared in some publications – all ‘again’ without prior permission.
First of all, it appeared on 24th November 2007 in Martin Waller’s City Diary Column in ‘The Times’ – here:
One of the B3ta.com regulars let me know about this, so I start the process as I had done before with ‘The Sun’, emailing ‘The Times’ and waiting for the runaround.
However, as happened with ‘The Sun’, the turnaround was pretty swift, and a few email exchanges later I received an apology, and also agreement to the invoice I forwarded. Generally, a pleasant experience as far as these things go. The invoice was settled early January 2008 and settled on good terms with ‘The Times’. Indeed, and as with ‘The Sun’ it was a nice suprise to deal with people who actually took the matter seriosuly, and had the good grace to apologise for their mistakes. Considering both publications are part of the Rupert Murdoch machine that is News International I wonder if it’s something they put in the water – whatever it is, it works, and it’s nice (speaking as a general nobody in the big scheme of these things) to be treated with a little common courtesy and respect in such matters.
Not everyone shares this commendable attitude though…
In the past on this, and other blogs (most notably the blogs of Beau Bo D’Or and Tim Ireland) there have been entries regarding the lack of common courtesy in dealings with NUTS and ZOO magazines. Well, guess what. The second appearance of the image in question appeared in the NUTS issue, dated 14 – 27 December 2007. Again, one of the kind regulars at B3ta.com let me know about it. It appeared in their ‘Spambank’ section, here:
Knowing the general routine by now, I trundle off to the newsagents after being informed of this, and reluctantly purchase a copy, (carefully hiding it inside a copy of ‘Big Jugs’ Monthly – which I buy for the gardening tips – so as not to show my shame in buying a copy of NUTS) and then set to work in finding out who to contact.
Well, first up is the email address given on the actual ‘Spambank’ page. So, off goes an email on 14th December 2008. One week later, no reply.
I try again, on 21st December 2008, and send it to the main email address given in the magazine to contact them for any queries. This time, after a few days, I get notification that the email was deleted without being read.
Thinking it could be my email at fault (whch I’ve never had much problem with before) I conclude that the best course of action is going back to basics, and writing them a latter, confirming the points I’d put in my emails.
So, off goes a letter on the 8th January 2008 (Thought I’d give them some time at the NUTS office to get over their Christmas hangovers) addressed to the Picture Editor of the magazine. Just to make sure it got to where it needed to, I made sure that the letter was sent via Royal Mail Special Next Day Recorded Delivery, costing me £4.30 in the process. (It’s the little details that keep it real)
It duly arrived at the offices (the tracking number provided by Royal Mail confirms to me that it was delivered) the next day.
Here we are on 2nd February 2008, and still nothing. 51 days since the initial email, and 26 days since the letter, and not even a courtesy email or letter to let me know that the matter is being ‘dealt with’ accordingly.
So, come Monday, another special recorded delivery letter goes off. This time to the Big Cheese, Magazine Editor Dominic Smith, and including an invoice (with a small additional charge for the postage costs I’m incurring) and 30 day terms to settle.
So, what makes all this potentially ‘interesting’? Well, I’m not alone in this. Turns out another regular B3ta.com member – ‘Wildyles’ is also fighting a similar battle with NUTS as well at present, over a very well circulated viral image spoofing facebook. The image in question can be found on his Website, with the image in question being found HERE.
‘Wildyles’ also adopted the ’special recorded delivery’ approach after he received no joy from emails, and has also received no reply from NUTS. He too will be sending out a further letter to the main Editor, together with his invoice, early next week.
It seems strange in an industry such as the Media, that the ‘Big Guys’ (News International) can generally get it right, and sensibly deal with the issues, and yet the relatively ’smaller’ guys such as NUTS (Division of IPC media) consistently fail to deal with matters in a sensible and rational manner, and – as has been shown in this instance – bury their head in the sand hoping it will all go away.
It won’t.
The comments field will be left open on this. If anyone passing by this blog entry (particularly B3ta.com users, or similar) has also been affected in a similar way, by NUTS or any other publication publishing their images without prior permission, please put a few details down in the comments field. It will be interesting to see the range of responses people have had from these companies, and also the outcomes they received.
**********UPDATE**********
As of today (4th February) the letter and invoice have been sent off – again via royal mail special next day delivery – to Dominic Smith, main Editor at NUTS. Guaranteed delivery by 1pm tomorrow. Will keep you all posted.
**********FURTHER UPDATE**********
Checking the online tracking number today (5th February) the letter and invoice arrived successfully before 1pm this afternoon. It also appears that ‘Wildyles’ letter and invoice arrived as well.
Now we wait…
**********UPDATE No. 3 – 22nd February**********
Email response received from Dominic Smith – Editor. Letter and contents are being dealt with. Letter being passed on to Publisher Clair Porteous to deal with directly. Should hear back shortly.
Having worked on many sides (Photographer, PR, Publisher) of the media I find NI’s attitude amazing and laudable.
So good for them.
NUTS may be IPC but really it’s TIME WARNER and since TW bought a real pup when they got IPC the company will be under enormous budget constraints & incentives (on saving money and meeting budgets) so the hapless idiotic souls at NUTS will be thinking that you are just going to go away. Which you’re not.
This link gives the emails for all the IPC Media Board.
http://www.ipcmedia.com/about/ipcmediaboard/
Selectively and politely email them about your situation.
CC: monkey@mediaguardian.co.uk; jason.deans@guardian.co.uk; stephen.brook@guardian.co.uk
CEO, Sylvia Auton was elected to the board of the PPA recently.
http://www.ppa.co.uk/cgi-bin/wms.pl/412
The Chair & Deputy Chair are big cheeses at Economist & Condé Nast. It might be worth embarassing Sylvia Auton by writing to Helen Alexander & Nicholas Coleridge and asking them whether it is PPA policy to treat copyright with such disdain and how do they feel about one of their Board Member’s magazines behaving in such a cavalier fashion.
The NUTS bods should be made to squirm – so copy the Editor/Publisher in on all correspondence/emails.
You should get your money pronto because they will want you to stop being a problem once the CEO’s PA gets on the phone to say “WTF! Sort this”.
Hope this has been useful.
Oh – And I hesitate to ask – It’s such a great posting can I use it (and the graphic) on Radio Barking?
********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
Please feel free to use the story (and image) on the website. Always nice to be asked, and we’re all fighting from the same corner.
many thanks
Thank you very much for the comment Eugen. Thank you for the information and details as well, very much appreciated, and has given me several avenues to pursue this further, which I fully intend to if I get no repsonse within a ‘reasonable’ time from the letter being delivered today directly to Dominc Smith (main Editor) at NUTS.
Please, feel free to use the posting and graphic on Radio Barking. As with all things like this, if you can find a little space for a credit on the piece somewhere it would be appreciated
Again, many thanks for your comment and info – VERY useful. Will keep the situation updated on here.
I’m currently awaiting a response from nuts about my pensionbook image!
I sent an email to them on the 10th January to John Gooch the picture Editor…no reply
Then on 18th January I sent a recorded delivery letter with an invoice…. also no reply.
Today I have sent a second recorded delivery letter to the Editor (Dominic Smith) with all the the details so far….. fingers crossed.
Steve (wildyles)
I had one of my photos stolen by Hachette’s Elle magazine last year (frustratingly, it was a bloody awful photo of a magic marker scrawl on a brick wall), but sadly the solicitor I asked to look into the matter seems to be a lazy clueless fucker who has sat with his thumb up his arse for the last eight months or so, so no resolution was ever really effected.
Still, I can now put in my CV that my photography has appeared in Elle Online, which is nice.
Early the other year when all this started with the Daily Sports internutter site I had a few images appear on that, I didn’t mind too much but wanted at least a credit that I had made it. Several people bombarded them with emails and I think the site has fallen by the wayside, well I can’t get the page to load, so it may have been abandoned.
Then we had the surge of weekely ‘lads mags’. Now being a grown up and having last purchased FHM about 5 years ago, I wasn’t interested in these psuedo-jazz mags, until comments started appearing on b3ta. The first of my images to go viral and appear between their sticky newsprinted pages was one showing the town of Boscastle’s new flood defences, which was a giant cornish pasty, I was quite happy it appeared and let it pass that they hadn’t asked permission.
At this point the snowball was gathering momentum within the b3ta community and most people were tagging their images.
The next image of mine to appear was one of Britney’s face seamlessly photoshopped onto the body of gollum from the LOTR movies. this was the time of her starting to go mental and shaving off her hair, which also led fellow b3ta member HappyToast to create an image of Britney looking like Homer Simpson. Both these images were used in the same edition of ZOO WEEKLY, both of us sent emails to the magazine, and to the same person as well (jo.usmar@emap.com) yet while HappyToast recieved a satisfactoy resolution (of a DVD player I think) I recieved nary a reply to my email. All I asked for was for them to credit me and in future leave my tag on the image which they had cropped out. I didn’t even want paying or something from the “free gift” publicity department.
It all just leaves a bad taste in the mouth and a spur to get behind you and others in ’sticking it to the man’ so that they understand for the future.
Also it would be nice if they failed to pay an invoice within in the alloted time and had one of the little guys file a winding up order on them for payment failure. I can envisage the headlines already. and the heads rolling.
Thor_sonofodin.
I think this link is appropriate for this item:
http://nuts2zoo.co.uk/
Nuts To Zoo, a satirical blog on how to rip off people using the internet.
Includes recordings of Zoo Magazine staff offering employment and spouting BS about not using the creator’s images agin.
My last image was used by National Geographic magazine, August 2007, and ZSL got paid a £1000. But i’m a bit useless with legal issues, though I could probably get you a nice legal angle from the press department at work.
My work email was used below
I’ve also had images stolen by them and the Sunday Sport with no reply
[Richard Hammond E.T. spoof] Zoo
[Pope Idol] Sunday Sport
keep up the good fight
I had a message on the B3ta gazmail from Zoo saying this:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We here at ZOO have seen your work pimpmybitchup.jpg on B3ta.com. We would like to publish it in next week’s issue of the magazine, in our “YOU’VE GOT SPAM!” section.
We are sorry, but we don’t pay fees for reproduction of your work in the magazine, but we will of course publish any credit you so desire.
Please confirm that you are the originator of this work and let us know by return email if this is all okay with you.
Please email info@zooweekly.co.uk and make the subject heading SPAM. If we don’t hear from you, we won’t publish.
Many thanks,
ZOO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I guess it’s decent of Zoo to ask, and I was happy for them to have it having asked about it, though I do not know if they would have used it anyway if I’d said no or not replied.
********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
Thanks for the comment. Probably good that someone has mentioned about ZOO’s handling of this as well. The b3ta.com ‘gaz’ message is standard fare now for most of the images they wish to use from the B3ta.com website – although it did take nigh on high a year of continued ‘communications’ with them to get them to acknowledge what they were doing, and try and find a way to work ‘with’ the members. As you say, at least they are bothering now to ask, although their own ’spam’ images page is somewhat less than it used to be, as I think the situation with ZOO and the B3ta regulars became so bad over the last few months that most people (myself included) denied them permission to use our images.
NUTS on the other hand, have simply refused to acknowledge any communication. Today is the 16th February, my second letter addressd to the Editor, Dominic Smith was delivered on 5th February, and I’ve had no acknoledgement via letter, email or suchlike yet.
As a ‘rough’ calculation, most ‘reasonable’ size publications should be prepared to pay around £150 for publication of an image with prior consent. ZOO was regularly running 5-6 images a week without prior approval.
Calculate this over a 50 week (1 year) period, to allow for some issues over 2 weeks (Christmas, etc) gives us the following – conservative – figure on how much they’ve saved from using our images without permission;
5 images at £150 per image = £750 per week over 50 weeks = £37,500
That’s why it’s easier (and cheaper) to just publish without permission and hope the creators don’t notice.
Thanks for the comment.
Not personally worried about any of my images being nicked due to talent deficit and the fact I mainly do animated .gifs these days but in sympathy and because I think it is a good idea have the following suggestion-
Talk to Private Eye. They might not be able to win you anything but an expose (accent that e for me will ya?) on how certain sections of the the press rips off the little guy sounds like their kind of fodder- especially the dynamic contrast with your experience from News International (they paid me as a researcher once many moons ago) and IPC. What will that achieve? Well, once it’s in PE then 90% of the press fraternity will read it and you may get some free legal advice from Robin Hood law firms. At the very least you will have elevated the name&shame to all of their peers.
Fight the power, brother.
I sent a link of the to the eye before reading this comment. I’m sure they will be interested in this….
I used to get a buzz from seeing my stuff in magazines and on other peoples websites, thinking “oooh they thinks its good enough to nick”!!
That was last January though and when Riverghost (on B3ta) started doing the featured ‘nicky nicky’ in his profile is when I first cottoned on that basically Nuts and Zoo were filling their pages as cheaply as possible.
The weird thing is… The first couple of images they used of mine, they didnt bother asking if they could use. Since then they have asked via pm. To which I always reply no… It seems saying no prevents publication. I reply “no” due to them removing my tags.
The most I expect is the credit for the ‘hummus’ .
..The whole thing about getting paid for our images does not sit well with me. I mean most of the time we have nicked a shopped somewone elses hard work. If we get paid for our ’shopped stuff, does that in turn mean we must do the right thing and pay the originators of the stuff we shop?
Without the “Now Thats what I call” logo the humour would be meaningless, I am sure the graphic designer that made the logo would want his share of the £150. I would hazard a guess that most b3ta users do their stuff for fun without having the worry of chasing their tails wanting to get paid for what is essentially throw away stuff.
********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
The ‘Buzz’ always used to be there for me as well. I’m not in the industry for these things as such, it was always a nice ‘pat on the back’ moment. However, after a while, when images are repeatedly used without permission, it starts to make you think about the free content that the magazines and publications get. If the credit was duly given, and permission was asked well before publishing I would have little to no problem with ‘5-min throwaway’ images being used. They were, after all, produced exclusively for a non-profit making website (B3ta.com) and also for this blog. However, people who ARE in this industry (the media/publication companies) and KNOW the legal side of these things blatantly overstep the mark and the guidelines set up for the industry Where images have been produced ‘from scratch’ (i.e. such as the ‘Now’ Logo, which wasn’t photoshopped from the original, but was a ham-fisted job on photoshop) the creator of that image then gets into a situation when they see their ‘work’ sprawled across publications, and in many cases, changed from the original version by being cropped, edited, de-tagged and suchlike. These publications wouldn’t do that to a bona fide photographer or photo journalist, it’s just that we are ‘lesser’ people in the industry, mostly with little or no knowledge. I would have NO problem in apportioning a part of any fee received to the original copyright holder if I used another image without permission which I received payment on. As it happens, I always tend to squirrel away any money received for such images to charity, as I don’t rely on photo-shoppery for a salary, it’s just a hobby, so at least someone benefits in the long run. However, the principle remains that many publications take images without seeking permission from the ‘creator’, which not only puts the creator in danger if their image (usually produced for the non-profit making B3ta.com website) is used in a profit making publication, but also involves the publication itself, who must KNOW they are also infringing any existing copyright by publishing it. That’s one of the reasons why ZOO now ask permission to publish via the internal message system on b3ta, and generally always ask in communication for confirmation that the creator is the ’sole’ creator of the image, thus putting the legal responsibility onto the creator, and they can then get away publishing it without paying a fee, and without legal repsonsibility, as they have a statement from you in black and white stating sole ownership. Dangerous grounds indeed.
As a small example of their ‘free content’, last year ZOO magazine were generally running approx. 5 images per week, most without permission, and taken from B3ta. Now, saying that a standard repro. fee could be around £100 per image, IF all of the images were of the sole creator’s ownership…
allow 50 weeks for the year (to include for xmas editions which run over 2 weeks, etc)
50 weeks x 5 images per week x £100 per image = £25,000 of ‘free content’
As said, I’m not in this industry, and as with most of us, always finding my feet with it in this kind of scenario, but that’s a reasonable amount of £ saved for a year of trawling b3ta and other similar websites and lifting images.
I want to go back and edit all my spelling errors.
From TGA: Leave it to me
As far as I see, TGA created a parody of the NOW cover.
I do not believe for a second there is any infringement in the logo and, as you can see from TGA’s response, the parody logo was created from scratch.
So, with all due respect Hummel, unlike other b3ta images which rely in part on others’ work (where you have a point), it is not the case with this image.
If *representations* of logos were considered a breach of any rights, there would be no cartoons containing such representations of political party logos in the UK or abroad.
It appears that Nuts are finally asking permission too now. Today I received this gaz:
My name’s Adam Ralph and I write for Nuts magazine. I also put together the Spam page in Nuts and, with your permission, we’d love to publish your Boing Jon Malkovich effort.
Each week the best Spam wins a prize, so although we can’t pay you for your work, there is a chance you could win.
If this is ok, could you please write me back giving persmission along with any credit you would like included.
If you don’t want us to publish your work, please let me know and we won’t.
___________________________________________________________________
I’ve replied that they can provided they credit me as Steve P (B3ta).
Nonetheless, the phrase “If you don’t want us to publish your work, please let me know and we won’t” is still an opt out rather than an opt in which suggests their attitude hasn’t chamged completely.
********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
Thanks for the reply Steve. I too have had Adam contact me via B3ta, and I’ve replied to him this evening. Hopefully I can get a resolution on the main points raised in this blog entry asap, as the requested date for payment of the invoice I sent (5th March) has now passed. Having been contacted by someone at NUTS on the 5th Match, wanting to deal with it then, and now hearing from Adam, I’m still confident that a successful and amicable resolution can be reached, which will then allow me to blog a nice result on the situation. NUTS have asked to publish two of my images in the last week, and at present, I am holding off on giving permission until this situation is resolved. Where there is a genuine chance of a B3ta.com contributor winning a small prize for an image which they have given the ‘nod’ to printing in NUTS, I see no reason why they shouldn’t, it would be silly not to as it’s always nice to see some of your own images in print. it’s also nice that they are also offering to credit the images to the creator as well, which is nice to see.
fingers crossed that my situation above resolves itself soon, I’m keen to write a concluding piece on it, and would like it to be favourable to all concerned, and then we can all get back to what we all do best, which is make funny images for B3ta
iPod Nano finally arrived last week (after half a dozen emails). To be fair the guy I emailed seemed genuinely annoyed that the PR dept seemed to be dragging their heels.
Just one complaint – the iPod’s not loud enough!