Photo taken from Wikipedia and used violating the license: the story of the Italian photographer Caranti
Niccolò Caranti, who is a professional photographer and a very active member of the Wikipedia community, addressed to my law firm reporting a violation of the copyright of a photograph.
In fact, during the event Festival delle Resistenze 2016 (www.piattaformaresistenze.it) held in Trentino-Alto Adige for several years, the Italian journalist Federico Rampini was one of the guest speakers. The picture used for all the promotional material was just a photo taken to Federico Rampini by Caranti and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license. Here it is.
However, there was a "little" problem: all the material realized with that picture (web pages, posters and flyers, social media posts ... but also widespread advertising posters throughout the Trentino-Alto Adige - see picture below) did not respect the license terms and - more precisely - was even not compliant with a more general moral right to attribution of intellectual paternity. In other words, the author's name never appeared, nor the reference to the license.
We therefore sent a formal cease and desist order to the event organizers (Young Inside, company from Bolzano). We received an answer by Elastic srl, the agency that takes care of intermediation and organization of events for Federico Rampini, explaining that the whole affair was the result of a mistake by them: substantially, instead of providing to Young Inside a picture from their archives, they sent the one made by Caranti taking it it from the web.
However, Elastica Srl immediately demonstrated its willingness to resolve the issue amicably. We have therefore drawn up and formalized a transaction which, in addition to reimbursement of legal costs incurred by Caranti, provides a damage compensation in his favor and the publication of a corrective statement both by Elastica (http://elastica.eu/it/erratacorrige/) and Young Inside (www.piattaformaresistenze.it/it/news/10-notizieit/253-errata-corrige).
This story has been also mentioned in the following articles:
In fact, during the event Festival delle Resistenze 2016 (www.piattaformaresistenze.it) held in Trentino-Alto Adige for several years, the Italian journalist Federico Rampini was one of the guest speakers. The picture used for all the promotional material was just a photo taken to Federico Rampini by Caranti and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license. Here it is.
However, there was a "little" problem: all the material realized with that picture (web pages, posters and flyers, social media posts ... but also widespread advertising posters throughout the Trentino-Alto Adige - see picture below) did not respect the license terms and - more precisely - was even not compliant with a more general moral right to attribution of intellectual paternity. In other words, the author's name never appeared, nor the reference to the license.
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| One of the promotional posters realized by infringing the license |
However, Elastica Srl immediately demonstrated its willingness to resolve the issue amicably. We have therefore drawn up and formalized a transaction which, in addition to reimbursement of legal costs incurred by Caranti, provides a damage compensation in his favor and the publication of a corrective statement both by Elastica (http://elastica.eu/it/erratacorrige/) and Young Inside (www.piattaformaresistenze.it/it/news/10-notizieit/253-errata-corrige).
This story has been also mentioned in the following articles:
- Arstechnica.com: Festival uses CC-licensed pic without attribution, pays the price (article by Glyn Moody)
- Blog.wikimedia.org: Misuse of Creative Commons-licensed photo leads to public apology (article by By Ed Erhart)
- CretiveCommons.org: Big win for CC in Italy (article by Jennie Rose Halperin)
- IlFattoQuotidiano.it (Insider): Rampini, Wikipedia e la foto contesa
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