Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Interesting take on intellectual rights and Creative Commons. I will be interested to see how this plays out as someone who shoots and posts photos from a lot of sporting events. I note that none of my images are licensed for Creative Commons and i have refused requests from commercial users where i don't have proper rights to sell team/player images, which only makes sense to avoid this very type of situation.

[quote="Toronto Star"]
http://www.thestar.com/olympics/article ... om-website

Olympics warns man to remove photos from website
October 09, 2009

Joanna Smith


OTTAWA

Although I am all for content owners enforcing their copyrights, one has to wonder if certain organizations deliberately overstep their boundaries with the thinking that they can bully smaller entities with the threat of litigation. Also, AFAIK, Richard Giles (the photographer) has not actually commercially licensed any of his Olympic photographs. So really the IOC is sending him a C&D for something he has not done. It smells a bit like the RIAA pre-emptively suing people just in case those people decide to illegal share MP3's on the Internet.

Here's the letter from the IOC:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgiles/3988389213/

This is not the first time the Olympic organization has come out swinging at small businesses.

I believe it was before the 1988 Calgary games that they were threatening businesses with "Olympic" in their name with legal action. I remember reading about some guy in Toronto who was born and raised in the shadow of Mount Olympus and named his business "Olympus Restaurant" but was being ordered to change the name. Yet somehow, the Olympic organization never challenged the powerful (and later bankrupt) Olympia and York developers, the Reichmans.

There are two issues here and the IOC is legitimately enforcing their right when requesting Richard C&D:

1. it's not uncommon for terms and conditions on the back of tickets to include a provision that prohibits the distribution or licensing of images captured at such an event, it doesn't not matter if he licensed it under a CC license or a commercial, for-profit license - effectively, Richard is subject to an enforceable, unilateral agreement based on the Terms and Conditions on the backside of his ticket. Although Richard owns the copyright in those photos, his contractual obligation to the IOC prohibits him from exercising the right to distribute the work and in most jurisdictions, posting the photos to flickr and offering them under a CC license probably qualifies as distribution (note that it doesn't not have to be for commercial gain);

2. any images that he took that contain ANY IOC trademarks cannot, without permission or license from the IOC, be licensed or otherwise distributed without their permission. Richard, by posting those images to Flickr and offering them under a CC license, is breaching the TM right of the IOC. The IOC's trademarks are not different than those of Coca-Cola, and it probably wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if they received a cease and desist letter from Coca-Cola if photos containing their TMs were being offered (without consent) under a CC license. IOC is merely trying to protect their TMs from dilution. They are, after all, private property and the IOC probably spends millions of dollars a year protecting it from dilution or unlicensed use.

It is important to read the CC licensing website BEFORE you apply CC licenses to your work. In particular, the section on "Make sure you have rights" in the link below which addresses some of the issues above:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing

With that being said I'm surprised they haven't gone after Olympus the camera manufacturer, or banned people using them at the Olympics.

Although the IOC were overly aggressive in their contact with this guy all it comes down to is changing his CC license to non-commercial. I don't think it should be blown out of proportion.

The quote at the end makes it sound like they are forcing him to remove all his images and that he won't be able to share his images at all, but, as they clarified after their original bullying message, the IOC are not against sharing photos taken at their events, just their commercial use. Giles himself says that he wants to share his photos for any use, including commercial, but this conflicts with the terms under which the images were taken.

I'm not sure I understand why Giles won't change his license if he hasn't, this isn't the kind of issue that warrants some kind of noble stands for misconceived rights.

I do not endorse copyright infringement but I cannot not notice how the IOC has transformed from an promoter of fairness, generosity, respect for the other into an ugly money making corporation.

All the the ideals of olympism envisioned by Pierre de Coubertin have subcombed to the mighty $$$$. Sad.

I think its things like these that make people want to violate it just for spite

Big corporations spend lots of money to protect their trademarks such as their images, logos, etc., because it's part of their identity. Some corporations can afford to hire specific staff including lawyers to seek out trademark offenders.

Unfortunately sometimes there are grey boundaries and often felt crossed. Often individuals or small business simply comply and just C&D as told to avoid any legal headache and do not have the resource to compete against such large corporations. The legal fees alone would shut almost anyone down.

There have been exceptions such as a recent case where McDonalds had lost their trademark fight against a small restaurant named McCurry.

One example was when the RCMP hired Disney to protect the Mountie image.