The tale of a photo theft, and how dipping freely into the Web for images can lead to grave consequences
ere’s a story for you. one day at work, i was amazed to discover we had among us an extraordinary photographer and writer. Tirelessly energetic, intensely thoughtful and entranced by the mountains, this young man lived only for the days when he could escape to Ladakh. Once there, he would completely assimilate with the local people and set out to reach the places least touched by humankind where he would wait for the right moment to take the most stunning photographs.
The Ladakhis are quite used to Thamo, or The Thin One, as they call him. His photographs (for those interested are at sankarsridhar.com) are so arresting, they have even been featured by National Geographic and the New York Times.
But my young photographer colleague is extremely publicity shy and does little to ‘market’ himself, which is where I came in, urging him to be more active online. Giving in to my nagging, he finally began to explore social media and interact with other photographers.
It was when he was looking through the photostream of another photographer that he found, staring right at him, every inch familiar, one of his very own photographs. Shell shocked for a while, he could only stare back at it in disbelief.
The image was one of two taken of the Chadar or frozen river in Ladakh. It wasn’t possible to take very many shots because the extreme cold meant taking one shot and then taking out the camera battery and holding it against the warmth of one’s skin. Taking the shot also meant walking through waist deep snow for several kilometers and for several hours.
When I learnt of this photo theft, my first reaction was to give the other photographer the benefit of doubt. Two people could very well have gone to Ladakh and shot pretty much the same spot. But when I saw the two photographs, I had no doubt they were one and the same. Two people can certainly go to Ladakh, but will the snow contour in exactly the same way? Will there be the same people in the same poses in the background? An inch-by-inch comparison confirmed it was the same photograph, only now, it wore a strange blue tint — and someone else’s copyright mark.
For someone who defines himself by those photographs and the experiences brought them about, this hurt a lot. When contacted, the other photographer reacted by removing the photograph and after several days of silence, admitting it wasn’t his own, but it was, probably, a batch processing mistake that must have just happened because he had been in a sad frame of mind, and so on.
He was in the process of being forgiven when it was discovered that most of his other photographs seemed to be doctored. Unusual patterns in the sky appeared in more than one photograph; mountain goats seem to travel from one part of India to the other by Photoshop; and more. He also made a second admission. He had taken the snowscape from someone else — and he obligingly provided a link. It led to a further shock. Someone else had stolen 19 of my colleague’s photographs. And that’s another story, being explored even as we speak, by a team of lawyers.
I described this rather ugly incident in detail because this isn’t an isolated one. Over the years, we have become too accustomed to dipping into the Internet for content — specially images — as if it were a great big bucket of freebies. This episode led to the photographer, who stole the photo, being ostracised from the online photography community and the very supportive Delhi Photographer’s Group on Facebook. Just this morning, someone told me of another incident: a designer I know has outright lifted someone’s poster, smacked his own copyright mark on it and entered it in a competition — and won! Not for long though, because the award and his reputation have been withdrawn.
But we no longer live in an age in which we can hide quietly in one corner of the Web. We leave our footprints everywhere, and it is far easier to be caught out than it ever was. And nor are the consequences to be sneezed at.
Copyright infringement of the sort described here can result in 3-6 months in jail and fines of Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh.
Considering we need, and use, images heavily on an everyday basis in our marketing material, on websites, blogs, shared presentations and so on, it’s important for both business and individuals to be aware of how a violation can mean losing more than they’d bargained for. Taking bits of images and collaging them does not make it one’s own creative work. Nor does putting a blue tint on a photograph you never went anywhere near shooting.
(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 24-05-2010)