Stolen Family Pic Ends Up On Billboard
Posted by JeanneSager at 2:00 PM on June 9, 2009
Here’s a horror story for you if you’re just about to launch a blog full of pictures of your family: a mom blogger who posted a picture of her family in high resolution on her site got an e-mail from a friend in the Czech Republic recently. He’d just seen their family portrait posted across a billboard.
And, no, they aren’t a family of models.
The picture, which Extraordinary Mommy writer Danielle says was used on her family’s Christmas card, her private Facebook, her site and a few Ning sites, where she’d posted it in high resolution because, as she says, “Clearly, I am not a professional photographer and should have made the resolution smaller and/or watermarked the picture.”
The ad is for a door-to-door food service – it directs you to a Website, and the words underneath have been translated by her friend who spotted the shot as “We will prepare and deliver your requests in two business days.”
Danielle blames herself for the mistake, and she’s not angry so much as creeped out by the matter. She’s not even planning to stop using family photos – although she will be reducing the resolution and/or watermarking the pictures. And while she puts all the blame on herself, let’s face it – it’s easy to see how this happened. As a professional photographer, I try to ensure my own photos are relatively small when I upload them, but back in the early days of blogging, I didn’t. I was equally clueless.
I read a lot of people who freak out about the use of kids’ images on blog sites because they’re afraid some pervert is going to get their kids. While it’s true they might be looking at your kids to get their jollies, let’s face it – they’d have the same reaction seeing your kids out on the street somewhere.
In this instance, the picture isn’t put out to any more people than the mom blogger already potentially opened her family up to. Their faces aren’t defaced, the photo is virtually the same. But I can’t blame her for being a little creeped.
What do you think? Will this change the way you blog? Check out her site for the original and more on the story and come back to comment.
Image: Extraordinary Mommy
I agree with you about the whole kids pictures on the internet/ZOMG think of the children and perverts thing. What is bad about this situation is that a company is using the image without reference, or payment, to where they got it from. That is rude, and potentially illegal (and if not it should be!) If someone was going to use a picture of my family to sell fast food I would expect them to ask first!