Update to the story. The story has come to a good end. Thank you for all the support and help with retweets, blog posts, comments and facebook wall posts on the incident. It really helped a lot to get the message across even before rediff editorial received the feedback I left on their site.
I received a call from rediff just now. They apologized for the incident and agreed to include correct attribution and also provide compensation for using the image. I thank rediff for the quick turnaround and proactive handling of the problem in a rightful way.
Thanks to everyone again for taking up the issue with a personal interest, providing helpful suggestions and spreading the word.
______________________________
Original Story
I was browsing through Rediff News this morning and was going through a story on Cherrapunjee. In their multi-page slideshow, I clicked on the second page and jumped when the page loaded. A picture of a waterfall I had taken at Cherrapunjee was smiling at me from the web page! Rediff had not only posted the image without my permission, they had also attributed the photograph to a “Sunil Bhatia!”
The page in which they are using picture is here (click ‘next’ on the slideshow to see my image of Nohkalikai Waterfall). You can see a screenshot of the page below (click to see full size).
The image of Nohkalikai Falls could have been taken from here (link to Cherrapunjee story on my blog) or here (link to image of Nohkalikai Falls in my image gallery).
I have written to rediff using the feedback form on their webpage, asking for attribution and compensation. I am waiting to hear from them and am eager to see how they will respond, if at all.
Rediff has been my primary source of news online so far. I have a high opinion about them and especially have a lot of respect for columns at rediff. I hope they respond in a way that helps me keep up that respect.
I also tried to leave a comment on the same page, but it repeatedly gave me error messages.
I shall update here, if there is any response from rediff.
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Really sorry to hear that Arun, they writing to the editor or the marketing head. I am told that marketing heads are the people who usually matter.
feels mean to say “welcome to the club” .. but cdnt think of anything else. I doubt u’ll get a response through the comment section. get in touch with someone in marketing. They’ll also react only once u create enough a ruckus to damage their brand.
This is terrible..
Once again the media has shown its class (or lack of it).
This is really horrible. I keep wondering how once can protect oneself from such incidents !
Unfortunate. Search for appropriate persons through linkedin and probably they’ll lead you to right people
[...] this on Arun’s blog- I was browsing through Rediff News this morning and was going through a story on Cherrapunjee. In [...]
This is terrible! I don’t know how many such acts keep happening without our knowledge. We should definitely fight for our rights.
@Mridula, thanks for the support, retweets and blog post.
@twilightfairy, thank you. I was long a member of the club.
Thanks for the tip and the retweets.
@lakshmi, yes. thankfully a good end to it.
@Nisha, thank you for the concern. Thankfully it ended without a battle!
@Meghana, thanks for the comment. I wonder how, too. So many people report theft of images these days.
@Shrinidhi, thanks for the inputs and the retweets.
Read that the issue is resolved…
Good to hear that the issue was resolved. I was hoping it would be!
@Shankara, I second your opinion. We should.
@Shrinidhi, yes, rediff was very forthcoming.
@Doli, thank you.
What’s the compensation u are getting? I sure hope they arent ripping you! they are supposed to give you 10 times more of what the image would have normally cost. Since you now need to collect license correction fees, damages etc. you can not use this image anywhere since it’s now been used against the license it had earlier.
[...] by WP Greet Box WordPress PluginArun who writes on Paintedstork.com got a shocker when he saw that Rediff had used one of his images without permission. He followed up with them and it seems he’s getting credit as well as compensation for the [...]
@Twilight fairy, rediff guys were forthcoming with the error and asked me to come up with a number. I asked them to pay only what I think is a fair price for image usage. The licensing is non-exclusive one time use fee, so it doesn’t stop me from using it anywhere anytime again.