Davey Winder
Wednesday, 11 February 2009 20:45
IT Industry -
Market
Page 2 of 4
I spoke to Mike this morning to get his side of the story
and discovered a man with a flat which overlooks Birmingham city
centre; a man who loves photography; a man who had been experimenting
one evening with a particularly good sunset.
"I must have taken over a 100 photos on the
night until I got the one that I uploaded to Flickr" Mike told me "I
knew that Flickr was a photo sharing site and I knew people would be
able to see the photos."
But Mike also knew that as the photographer it was he who retained
copyright so wasn't overly concerned. What he never imagined was that
"someone would have the balls to rip a photo from Flickr and use it for
commercial purposes." As Mike says "it was a double whammy to find that
it was the BBC."
Of course, the BBC claims it did not rip the photo from Flickr at all
but rather that it came "via a website not connected with your Flickr
page" although the Beeb does admit that the "image was used on air."
My requests for the BBC to reveal which website it was taken from have, unsurprisingly, fallen on deaf ears.
However, here is the full text of the reply that the BBC Complaints
Co-ordinator, David Larner, sent to Mike in response to his initial
complaint:
"Dear Mr Bailey. I write in response to your recent email regarding an
image used as a backdrop to BBC Birmingham's news studio. My name is
David Larner and I am the BBC Information Complaints Co-ordinator with
responsibility for the BBC's English Regions therefore this matter has
been escalated for my personal attention. Please accept my apologies
for the delay in replying over the Christmas and New Year period.
I have now had the opportunity to investigate this matter with the
relevant senior personnel in Birmingham and have set out the
circumstances below. The image to which you have referred on Flickr is
indeed that which was visible behind the Birmingham interviewee on the
BBC News channel on 18 December. It appears that this came about due to
human error."
The BBC letter continues on page 3, and we will also reveal what
happened in the end along with the BBC's comments to our questioning
today.
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