Phone Box Blog

I need to relay an incident that happened to me today.

I received a demand for money from a company called Alamy, for the use of an image of theirs on my blog. They want me to pay for a retrospective licence. This image showed a red phone box (naturally) which appeared randomly on my Facebook feed over a year ago. I took a crappy screenshot and I uploaded it to this blog. I accept that I didn’t consider copyright. I had seen this image before on Facebook so it was doing the rounds before I took the screenshot. I did not take the image from an Alamy site so never considered there would be a problem. I realise now that it was naive of me not to be concerned about Facebook images that are uploaded to this blog. I have in the past asked individuals for permission to post their images but hadn’t considered that an image that appeared on my Facebook feed, that I then copy and redisplay citing it as a facebook post, could be a copyright issue.

I removed the image immediately, apologied to the company and explained the senario in which that image came to be on my blog but they made it clear that they don’t care. There was no goodwill shown to me in this instance. In the past I have had a photograph I took used without permission in a print publication. Copies of this magazine still exist without the proper acknowledgment. That image can’t just be deleted as in this Alamy case. As there was no financial gain on anyone’s part I accepted the apology and moved on. So I do understand how photographers get screwed over.

I keep this blog going becaue I want to share and collate stories about phone boxes. I don’t make any money off this blog and never have, but by posting stories and images I believe I am giving those objects free advertising. I think that is an acceptable balance. I don’t pay you for permission but you get free advertising (and I don’t make a penny).

This blog will be taken down for a bit so I can ensure that any social media posts I keep have the source from which it was acquired included in the image or label.

So, if you see an image that you originally posted an a social media site and wish me to remove it, please just ask. I will comply. Don’t be a dick and threaten legal action.