Avoid Getting Burned By Copyright

Contributed By: TheOnsiteManager on

It’s becoming an all-too-frequent occurrence these days that photographers contact us, quite upset, because someone has violated their copyright on images and floor plans in property marketing. When we contact the manager to inform them of the breach, the response is invariably the statement: “but the vendor / owner / previous manager gave those images to me to use!” Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth and managers are often shocked to discover this.

Under copyright law in Australia, copyright exists automatically once an artist creates a work, be it a photo, drawing, video, etc. Copyright grants the original artist the right to reproduce or copy their own work, display their work, publish their work or adapt their work. Other people who are not the original artist, need permission to do any of those things, even if they paid the artist for the work. Copyright ownership, is considered legally different to physical ownership of artwork. Just because you paid a photographer for photos or floor plans, doesn’t mean you own the copyright to those images.

What they typically sold you, was a licence to use the work for a specific purpose – but this licence isn’t typically transferable to a third party. You should always check the terms and conditions surrounding your agreement with the artist for clarification on this point. But that’s generally what happens.

If you didn’t directly commission the artist, and were simply resupplied works from a second or third or fourth party, then it is almost certain this licence was not transferred, even if you paid that party for the images. Unless the original artist has signed over the copyright, then the copyright on the work was never theirs to give or sell you. If you use the images, you’re breaching copyright.

Breaching copyright can be a big deal. Some companies are even going as far as writing scripts that trawl the internet identifying all images they own that are used on the internet without permission, and simply sending the violator an invoice (often thousands of dollars) with the option  to either pay, or go to court. With the cost of a court proceeding being tens or even hundreds of thousands, most people have little choice but to hand over the money. It’s a frequent occurrence and a very costly mistake for anyone using images whose origins and ownership they aren’t certain of.

The simple solution to this quagmire is don’t use 3rd party images. Don’t use images supplied to you by vendors, don’t use images that came with properties you purchased. It is almost certain the licence to use them doesn’t apply to you, and you the cost of ignoring this is at your own significant peril. It is far easier and less painful to get your own photography / floor plans.

We’ve been using Real Property Photography for photography of late, they charge just $135 for a 12 image photo shoot and they have photographers all over Queensland who do really good quality work. It’s the best price I’ve found so far for quality photography. Avoid the expense and hassle of using illegal images, and just hire a photographer. As a manager, you’d only need to do 1 shoot of your complex and you’ll have images you can use over and over, just make sure you don’t try and sell them to the new manager, because that’s when things can get messy.

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