I put an update on Facebook last week to tell everyone about a nasty surprise I received when a friend from Swindon called to tell me that she was walking in the shopping mall and saw a photo of my son on canvas. It was displayed at a kiosk for a company who prints canvases. My watermark had been removed from the image which has only ever been displayed online on Facebook and Flickr.
I have been sorely disappointed in the past week as I have been trying to resolve this in the proper channels with no suitable outcome. I called Trading Standards to report the breech of copyright and from them, was referred to the copyright authorities. When I called them, the number had an answering machine that sounded very homemade and my call has never been returned.
I was left with no other option than to contact them myself. When I called the shopping mall kiosk, the man was surprisingly nice considering the script I read to him over the phone which stated that he was in breech of copyright and blahdee blah. He said he’d gotten the canvas from his ‘supplier’ in Birmingham. He later called me back with the supplier’s details and said he would keep the canvas for me.
So now, there’s a company in Birmingham who is distributing these photos of my son to their canvas stores. As if I don’t have enough on my plate!
So please…if anyone in the UK happens to see this photo in their local shopping mall, I would REALLY love to know about it.
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