BBC accused of "looting" copyrighted pictures from Twitter

United Kingdom

Khurram Aziz - News Editor

The BBC has become embroiled in a row over the use of photographs uploaded to social networking sites such as Twitter, after claiming that such photographs were in the public domain and therefore not protected under copyright law.

The corporation later retracted its position but continued to anger photographers' groups because it insisted that it would still use such pictures without permission if it deems it in the public interest to do so.

The row stems from the BBC's online coverage of the London riots earlier in August when it attributed pictures it published on the events as "from Twitter". This led to a complaint from online blogger and amateur photographer Andy Mabbett who said that some of his pictures of the riots had been published on the BBC website without correctly identifying him as the source.

In a letter to Mabbett, the BBC responded, "Twitter is a social network platform which is available to most people who have a computer and therefore any content on it is not subject to the same copyright laws as it is already in the public domain."

That response caused a backlash from the photographer community forcing the channel to reconsider the complaint. Its social media editor, Chris Hamilton, wrote on the BBC's blog, "We've looked into the response that was sent [to Andy Mabbett]. It essentially stated such content was ‘not subject to the same copyright laws as it is already in the public domain'... Unfortunately, this is wrong, and the response doesn't represent BBC policy. We apologise for any confusion it caused. Another direct response, and apology, is being sent to Mr Mabbett."

However, controversially, Hamilton added, "In exceptional situations, where there is a strong public interest and often time constraints, such as a major news story like the recent Norway attacks or rioting in England, we may use a photo before we've cleared it".

The row highlights a grey area in copyright law over the use of images posted on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. While Twitter insists the original owner of a picture still retains the copyright, its terms and conditions contain provisions which allow it to redistribute images posted on its site to third parties without permission.

The Daily Mail newspaper ran into a similar controversy recently when it too used a picture taken from Twitter, attributing it to the photographer's Twitter name, @wonderlandblog, and to Twitter. According to reports the photographer, Alice Taylor, had already refused the newspaper permission to use the photograph without paying a licence fee.

In a separate case in the US, freelance photographer Daniel Morel has taken news organisation Agence France Presse to court after it published images of the 2010 Haiti earthquake Morel posted on Twitter. According to Agence France Presse, Morel had implicitly granted a non-exclusive licence to third-parties to use the images. However, a judge dismissed Agence France Presse's claim, allowing the photographer to move forward with his copyright infringement case against the news agency and Getty Images.

Commenting on the controversy, a spokesperson for the UK Intellectual Property Office said, "It is advisable to assume that every image on the web belongs to someone and using it without permission will be an infringement of the owner's rights... Use of copyright-protected work without the owner's permission is most likely to lead to civil infringements. This can result in damages being paid to the owner."

However, the spokesperson added that by agreeing to Twitter's terms and condition, the user grants Twitter the right to distribute their images, even though they keep copyright.