I do not think that that is good enough. There are two types of rights involved: copyright and model permission.
The copyright belongs to the photographer. Except in the case of selfies, that is not the model. Only the copyright holder can give permission. And in many jurisdictions, some rights cannot be signed over, for example the right to be mentioned as the photographer.
Then there is model rights. In many jurisdictions, a company needs to obtain permission from the person portrayed to use their image in advertising.
The Forum isn’t equipped to answer this, as it deals with concepts like copyright and law.
I’ll take your comments back to the team and see if they’re able to give me any further information, but ultimately, I might not be able to come back with an answer. I’m happy to try though, and I’ll update here if I can.
I hear you @pietkuip - so I passed that along as feedback as well. As always, I can’t promise anything, but I’ve let the team know and will update if I can.
I don’t know about the legalities but it does seem odd that THS didn’t think, with almost 200,000 members, a better option would have been to turn it into a bit of a competition.
'Who wants to be in our promo gallery? send in your favourite pics and win a couple of month’s membership - who doesn’t like a competition?
Honestly, I was surprised to see my photo included without being asked for permission. However, I took the photo, it is me in the photo and I did ask the owner of the dog for permission before posting it so I don’t really mind it being used.
However, I do recognise another now ex-THS member in the gallery. They were a very experienced member of THS and used to be a regular contributor to the forum. They were so upset by the changes that THS were making that they left the site and asked for all their posts to be removed from the forum.
I am not so sure that using their image to represent a happy THS member was the best idea ever.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts @Colin. The banner update happened quite a while before I started, so while Carla’s offline I might need some time to get some more information about this.
I’ll make sure to discuss all of this with her when she’s back, so please bear with us as it’ll take a few days.
I’m back with an update for you, after speaking to the wider team!
It’s timely that you’ve mentioned the banner, as the brand refresh we recently announced also includes an opportunity for us to update the look and feel of the Forum including the banners - this should take place before the upcoming holidays.
The team is building an image and permissions process as we speak as it’s really important to us that everyone at the Forum feels that the community is being celebrated in the right way.
@Colin, as it sounds like you weren’t aware of the clause in the T&C, and wouldn’t have realised that meant we were permitted to use the photo to be celebrated here, we’re happy to remove this batch of images in the coming days.
Please bear with us for now, and I’ll be happy to update you all with any other information that I might get.
I hear what you’re saying @Marlamay and I’m glad @Colin started this topic to bring more awareness to us, so we could help. As I mentioned in my previous reply the team are now working on an additional process for using member photos as a result of the feedback we’ve received.
