Whether you're of the opinion that the laws in place wherever you live are too lax, overly strong or simply not up-to-date, you can be sure that there are echoes of your sentiments somewhere within the annals of power,
Copyright, trademark and patent laws exist on the books of almost all nations or states, and there are also over-arching treaties governed by organisations like WIPO - such as the Berne Convention - which mean the rights of an author / creator on one side of the world are equally applicable - and enforceable - in some far distant land.
Thus it is with a little surprise, and a considerable amount of disappointment, that I happened to discover that one of my photographs had recently been appropriated and used by the Liberal Party of Australia, as part of material for their campaign in the run-up to state elections in Victoria in late November of 2014.
I was first alerted to this matter when a friend living on the outskirts of Melbourne thought she had spotted one of my pictures on television. Knowing full well that I hadn't had any requests to use any of my work in Australia for quite some time, I asked her if it would be possible to keep an eye out for the same advert again and, if she could, grab a picture on her phone.
This is what she managed to send to me.
Without a shadow of a doubt, it was clear that it was one of my own photographs - a rather infamous one of mixed martial arts athlete Joe "Daddy" Stevenson, following his loss to BJ Penn after their lightweight title fight at UFC 80 inside Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle, England on January 19 of 2008. Here's the full frame that I shot on that evening.
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| Joe Stevenson (c) Martin McNeil, All Rights Reserved |
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| My frame (top) and a close-up of the screen capture (bottom) |
At this juncture, I didn't know the full extent or nature of the use, but one thing was quite clear; no-one from the Liberal Party of Australia, much less anyone claiming to be acting on their behalf, had contacted me to seek even the most basic permission to use the shot.
What followed next took a bit of time and digging around on account of the way internet search engines index content - particularly photographs. It may take weeks or months before search tools such as Google, TinEye and other similar applications are able to crawl, catalogue and point towards relevant content, and this was certainly the case here.
As it turns out, the Liberal Party hadn't just used the picture in a network television broadcast; it had also been posted to the social media accounts relating to the Victoria branch as well; here are two URLs which, at the time of typing, are still quite live
You'll notice that their use on Facebook attracted 1,489 "likes", 849 "shares" and in excess of 2,000 comments. That's a significant amount of reach and impact. Over on Twitter, the use garnered 32 "retweets" and 18 "favourites"
The last remaining question was as to the extent of use of the photograph when broadcast - which took the most digging of all. Whilst I do not know on how many stations it aired, nor how many times it was repeated, I did find out that the advert had created quite a stir in both political and sports reporting circles, which eventually led me to find a copy of the advert itself - as aired - at the following link
http://mmakanvas.ninemsn.com.au/video/773/liberal-victoria-campaigns-against-cage-fighting.html
The ElectionWatch site in Australia referenced and linked to the video (as at this page, though you may have to scroll down a bit), linking directly to the YouTube account operated by the Liberal Party though, curiously, it is no longer viewable as the permissions of it have been set to private.
The ElectionWatch site in Australia referenced and linked to the video (as at this page, though you may have to scroll down a bit), linking directly to the YouTube account operated by the Liberal Party though, curiously, it is no longer viewable as the permissions of it have been set to private.
Regardless of this small hurdle, my discovery of a copy of the video helped to track down the person who might be said to be most directly responsible for the issue at hand: during the closing seconds, there is a notice saying that it was "Authorised by D. Mantach, Liberal Party Victorian Division" and thus unambiguously the official product of their party political apparatus. D. Mantach turns out to be Damien Mantach, whom has been the State Director for the Liberal Party in Australia since 2011.
The Australia Copyright Act (1968) has exceptions for what is called Fair Dealing (more commonly known as Fair Use in many countries which have such exceptions); I've researched the text of the act, and the manner and means in which the Liberal Party made use of my work is not covered by the very narrow language of the exceptions therein.
So, what to do?
Well, I sent an email to several key people within the Liberal Party, laying out my claims and asking that they reply to me on or before February 28, 2015; the message was sent to
- Senator George Brandis, QC - the Attorney General for Australia, Minister for the Arts and also deputy leader of the Government in the Australian Senate... and a Liberal Party member.
- Bruce Billson MP - Minister for Small Business, Member for Dunkly (Victoria) and also a Liberal Party member.
- Damien Mantach - as referenced above, via the email address as published here (not in the least because his name is also at the very foot of that page)
- The Liberal Party of Australia - via the email address as published here
As of the time of publishing this post, I have only had an automatic response email from Bruce Billson MP, indicating that my message had been received; I've had no other word from anybody from or claiming association with the Liberal Party.
Politicians, when spouting rhetoric on matters of law and justice, are often quite fond of saying that no-one is above the law, and that we are all equal before it. Scarcely over a year ago, George Brandis QC spoke to the Australian Digital Alliance Forum about planned crack-downs on copyright infringement.
I'm still waiting on word back from Brandis - and others - as to how they will address their own party's infringement of my copyrights and, whilst I'm hoping that this situation will get resolved as quickly and cordially as possible; perhaps if this post gets shared across social media and in the press in a similar extent to the way the Liberal Party used my photograph, they might deign to actually reply to me.
Politicians, when spouting rhetoric on matters of law and justice, are often quite fond of saying that no-one is above the law, and that we are all equal before it. Scarcely over a year ago, George Brandis QC spoke to the Australian Digital Alliance Forum about planned crack-downs on copyright infringement.
I'm still waiting on word back from Brandis - and others - as to how they will address their own party's infringement of my copyrights and, whilst I'm hoping that this situation will get resolved as quickly and cordially as possible; perhaps if this post gets shared across social media and in the press in a similar extent to the way the Liberal Party used my photograph, they might deign to actually reply to me.
In my experience, an old school physical letter gets a far better response from politicians. They get inundated with emails as they cost nothing to send and can be done en masse, whereas a physical letter takes a little more effort.
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