Sunday, July 3, 2011

Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Work: Hyde Park Art Center and/or F Newsmagazine?

***Updated: Hyde Park Art Center was not involved***

School of the Art Institute "F Newsmagazine," dated June 27, 2011, under the heading "F Art Reviews: We Don’t Like It So You Don’t Have To," subtitled "Conrad Frieburg’s 'It Is What It Isn’t' at the Hyde Park Art Center," author Stephanie Cristello employed three images with the attribution: "Image courtesy of the Hyde Park Art Center."

Conrad Freiburg @ Hyde Park Art Center

The third Frieburg image (as seen above) is not "courtesy of the Hyde Park Art Center," but rather it is copyright Paul E. Germanos.

- I, Paul, was not contacted in reference to the use of the image.

- My authorship is not indicated at F Newsmagazine; photo credit is given to Hyde Park Art Center.

- No copyright symbol is displayed at F Newsmagazine.

- The whole of the image is used at F Newsmagazine.

- F Newsmagazine sells ad space.

- The image is now being broadly and freely recirculated without credit, copyright notice, or permission, in .png form, large-sized, via the F Newsmagazine web host.

See article, "F Art Reviews: We Don’t Like It So You Don’t Have To," with violation:
http://fnewsmagazine.com/wp/2011/06/game-show-for-one/

See also photo used here, three months earlier, in a (pictorial) review of Frieburg’s show:
http://paulgermanos.blogspot.com/2011/03/pictorial-conrad-freiburg-hyde-park-art.html

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Postscript, July 5, 2011:

Within 24 hours of the issue of a "cease and desist" letter, the image in question was removed from F Newsmagazine. Too, Paul Elitzik, Director of the Student Publications Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, sent a follow-up e-mail.

Bizarrely, there was no reason to steal: Flickr provides the necessary code for legal display on-line--offered by means of a familiar row of icons which are found atop each image, on each image's Flickr page, as follows:

* Share via email
* Share on Facebook
* Share on Twitter
v More ways to share-->Grab the HTML

It's needful to keep the artist's name, gallery name, exhibition dates, location/contact information, photographer's credit and copyright, together. Flickr's TOS demand that their code be used; no "hot-linking" is acceptable. A contract with a division of Getty Images, independent of Flickr and any "fine art" activity, prohibits me from "giving away" imagery. The photography should not be taken from Flickr.

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Addendum, evening of July 5, 2011:

Though Hyde Park Art Center had been named by F Newsmagazine as the source of the imagery in question, HPAC was not the source of the imagery in question. HPAC was not contacted by F Newsmagazine; HPAC does not have said imagery in its possession.

Thank you Kate Lorenz, Executive Director Hyde Park Art Center, for your time and attention to this matter.

No person from SAIC's F Newsmagazine has yet explained how the imagery was obtained, or why HPAC was implicated.

Someone, or some group of people, made the decision to steal the imagery from (me) my Flickr account, convert said imagery to .png format, upload it (large-sized) to F Newsmagazine's host, and tell the lie that HPAC provided the material. Who? Why?

- Paul Germanos

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