Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image
About 15 minutes ago I visited my Profile Page on Facebook and noticed a familiar map of mine was being used without my authorization:
My website’s Fair Use policy states “For any intended commercial use of content on this website, I request that you contact me so that we can arrange appropriate compensation.” There was no effort to contact me before using my map in the advertisement and had they chosen to contact me, I would have requested some form of compensation. I decided to report the advertisement to Facebook:
Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image
(Yes I am aware of the grammatical error!)
I also sent the company, which I am purposely not linking to in this entry, a polite cease and desist e-mail asking them to either take down the advertisement or pay me and I sent out a tweet linking to this entry. Maybe I should pursue further action? Let’s see how they respond…
UPDATE – A few minutes after I sent my Tweet, I received the following responses:
Later in the evening I noticed that they merely changed the graphic and kept the original ad:
Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image
Makes me wonder if they are using someone else’s image illegally?
UPDATE – This morning I received this e-mail:
So I get to BUG him about a $10 coupon after my copyright was violated? That ad was probably seen by thousands of people! What a crock.
UPDATE – August 12th, 2009 – I decided to do some sleuthing and found that the image that Groupon.com replaced my image with was also a copyrighted image! Using the website TinEye.com I was able to eventually trace their current image to this blog entry. I contacted the copyright holder and he said that he had not given them permission to use his photograph either….
[…] 1880 Street Railway Map of the City of Washington Within Sight of the White House [Overlay of Hooker's Division] Maps: Finding Our Place in the World 5, 10, 60, & 101 Quilt Terra Fermi 51 Random Banners Pentagon Quilt Lower Manhattan Quilt On Current TV 2008 Urban America Calendar A Projected Relief Park Map of the United States – The Washington Times, March 28, 1897 2010 Cartographic Calendar A Perpetual Calendar showing the day of any month corresponding to any day of the week, for the year 1775, to the year 2025 The December 2008 issue of QST Magazine Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism by Nato Thompson and Independent Curators International Bright Felon: Autobiography And Cities By Kazim Ali Manhattan & Brooklyn Bridge Quilt […]
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