Wednesday 8 January 2014

Chalk one up for the small guy/girl/person (UPDATE)

Yay!

After my threat of legal action, the Telegraph have agreed to pay me the full £180 for the unauthorised use of my photograph.

I'm very confused about their attitude though. This is what Louisa Peacock, an editor at the Telegraph, emailed me:

I have spoken further to my editor and we will pay you the £180 you demand. This is out of goodwill but you must understand we obtained permission for this: the feminist society is where you should direct your issue to make sure it doesn't happen again.

We simply would not have used your image if we'd have known we did not have permission.

I hope you understand this was a genuine mistake.

Ok, this is fairly reasonable, but as I have always said, the Telegraph is partly at fault here. So I replied:

I understand you attempted to obtain permission, but I do not think it is right that you assume a third party is legally permitted to give permission for someone else's work to be used. In future you should be ascertaining if a licensing agreement has been made between the copyright holder and the third party.

And then she seemed to get a bit upset:

Ok - but the 'third party' in question is the university of which you are a member.

No, Louisa. I am a graduate of the University of Bristol, which is not affiliated with the Feminist Society. FemSoc is affiliated with the University of Bristol Students' Union, which I am not a member of. I emailed her back to let her know.

Anyway, this is all sorted now. Now I can carry on updating this blog with the odd photo and scribbles (:

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