I tweeted it, and TwitPic'd one picture. Then Cory BoingBoing'ed it. Then the WashPo emailed, asking permission to reprint, and asked for a quote or two. I said yes. I sent them a further pic, too.
Then the Daily Mail got in touch. Could we use the photos, they said. I said, yes, if you donate £250 - a standard photo fee in my book, certainly less than what Getty charges, say - to a charity of my choice. I don't like the Daily Mail, and didn't want to give them commercial use of my pictures for free.
*On Behalf Of *Alice Taylor
*Sent:* 14 August 2011 06:48
*To:* Ariel Ramerez <Ariel.Ramerez@mailonline.com>
*Subject:* Fwd: Fwd: skinny model pix
Hi Ariel,
I can't give the Daily Mail permission to use
these pictures conmercially, for free.
I'm happy to licence the Daily Mail a commercial
usage if it donates a standard picture fee (£250+)
to a charity of my choice however.
Best!
Alice.
They came back and said, too expensive:
On 14/08/11 22:16, Ariel Ramerez wrote:Hello Alice,
Thank you for getting back to me. Appreciate it.
We are the MailOnline - the web portion.
Unfortunately, your listed price far exceeds our
budget - which also comes in $. We'd be happy to
make the donation however we would need it to
meet our budgetary constraints.
Please let me know.
Best,
Ariel Ramerez
...to which I said, oh well - sorry, then it's no. (The Daily Mail can afford the photo fee - and if it doesn't want to, then I'm not selling it the rights to my photos.)
From: Alice Taylor
Sent: 15 August 2011 05:28
To: Ariel Ramerez
Subject: Re: Fwd: skinny model pix
Oh well - it's a no then.
(IMHO, obv, the Mail can afford it, and
I have no love for that paper so
- apols!)
Thanks for the interest tho!
A.
It was acknowledged:
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:46:11
From: Ariel Ramerez <Ariel.Ramerez@mailonline.com>
Thanks for letting me know.
Best,
Ariel
And then, instead, the Daily Mail then used both my photos - despite being denied permission - lifting them directly from the WashPo, along with the quotes I gave that newspaper, too.
The Daily Mail links neither to BoingBoing, nor to the WashPo, nor indicates my comments were to the WashPo either. Their reporting makes it sound like I talked to them directly.
To add insult to injury, they remove all the linkbacks, present in the WashPo article, to my original tweet, and to Cory's BoingBoing post.
They don't even link to the WashPo article that they lifted the quotes and photographs from.
I've asked the Daily Mail to now pay up for the unauthorised use - and knowing infringement - of these pics. I'm currently requesting 2 x £1000 charitable donations, which I will request go to MIND and ORG.
Updates to come, I'm sure.
UPDATE 1: 100s of retweets of this post later, but still no response to my email to the DM. Apparently they do this - wilful copyright infringement - rather a lot.