Has anyone else had this happen to them? I had a D-List celebrity steal one and had a lawyer make them pay up but the US government is a bit of a different beast. I’ve had Cuba and Russia steal it too. I’m not sure it’s worth kicking that hornet nest.
I should probably copyright register it.
I don’t know about the other countries (esp. Russia who has very lax copyright laws), but the US govt probably does it by accident often enough that if you send them a bill for the licensing, they’ll probably just pay it to avoid the hassle.
I can’t find anything on that and it would appear from what I have found the photos they use are either government produced and not copyrighted or have been assigned to the government and no longer protected.
So that’s a concern too.
Copyright is automatic on creation of the work. There’s nothing to register.
Good habit is to watermark your work.
As someone that does media for various branches, it’s happens painfully often.
When I was with a library system, the head of the comms team downloaded a persons cooking video from youtube, edited out every instance of the channels logo on the bottom and clips of the persons face then uploaded it like “To celebrate this event, here’s our recipe for this dish”. They didn’t see anything wrong with what they did. For Behavioral Health, they sent me a watermarked photo they liked and asked if I could just remove the watermark and use it for fliers.
Only person that ever double checked if we had a license for an image was up in admin. Everyone else had this surreal idea that if something was online, it was free to use.
I don’t consider it theft… question’s kinda moot.
See a copyright lawyer. A friend has made dozens of claims in the last decade over stolen pictures from Flickr by cheap ass corporates. He’s well into 6 figures better off.
I had the USAF do it, so I guess it’s close enough.
Why on earth would YOU steal the government’s photo comrade?
As someone else suggested, send a DMCA takedown notice. The reason the site says that nothing on it is protected by copyright is because the government can’t own copyrights.
Some context and specificity would be sort handy, here. What happened? Which agency used your photo?
Hello, current US government employee. My agency was sued for a pretty penny some time ago because they weren’t doing their due diligence when it came to using images. Every employee now has to take a IP training before they’re let loose.
Reach out to their public affairs dept, it’ll be taken care of if they’re not complete idiots. If they don’t comply, make them comply with a DMCA complaint as others have mentioned.
I had a politician in Chile use my photo for a major campaign. Thousands of billboard prints, who knows how many online ads…
Turns out Chilean copyright law was written before the internet existed and hasn’t been updated since, they really don’t have a way to address online image theft. After a bunch of talks with lawyers I had to just walk away.
It’s literally no different from dealing with the D-list celebrity. Contact that lawyer again and sue the government.
Government agencies don’t have the power to revoke your copyright. The notice on their page has as much legal weight as when people post “I don’t consent to Facebook blah blah” on facebook.
I’m insulted that no one has stolen my photos, tbh. Then again I probably wouldn’t know. How did you find out?
I had a couple photos used in some US Gov environmental study PDF’s I found listed online. I release the online versions of my photos licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA-NC. The photos were from Canada but they used them and fully credited me and even left the watermark on the photo.
Generally they’ll pay up if notified. If not, you can file a tort claim against the agency. Under $2500 processes quickly. Over that, the review levels increase.