Now, it depends how far you want to take this…
I’ve had magazines use my photos without permission before, and an entertaining incident a little while ago with another photographer who’d done erased the copyright mark from one of my photos and was passing it off as his own. I was not happy…
Copyright infringement is theft. It’s also a horribly complicated tangle of law too, made worse by the fact that different countries handle it differently – and some countries seem to accept (and even tacitly endorse) wholesale copyright theft.
I would be inclined to send them a bill. You own the copyright of the photograph and they have used the image without your consent. When one sells a photo what one is *actually* selling is the reproduction right, which should be stipulated in the sale agreement. And they don’t have a sale agreement…
So I’d bill them for use of the photo – quoting a reasonable going rate. However, you also add (and specifically state what and why) a whopping great administration charge covering the unauthorised use of copyrighted material. And I do mean a whopping fee – maybe 10 times the usage fee.
If you’ve got a solicitor, give him a copy too…
Given the track record of these guys, of course there’s every likelihood that they’ll ignore it. And that’s where your decision about how far and hard you’re willing to push this comes into it.
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