NDP candidate takes socialism to a new level
A photo in the July 10th edition of "The Fitzhugh", a weekly paper in Jasper, AB credited to Yellowhead NDP candidate Ken Kuzminski was demonstrably taken by Brendan Frisina, a friend of mine who is living in Jasper for the summer, and is used in the paper without his permission. Updated
The photo in question is of a derailment that Brendan watched take place on June 29th.
At that time (Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:10:38, UTC-6/MDT), Brendan posted a photo of the derailment to popular trainspotting website railpictures.net and sent the following message, which included a copy of the photo, to the major mailing list for trainspotters watching CN operations in Canada. It reads, in whole:
 Above: the photo from The Fitzhugh with credit enlarged. Below: Brendan's original colour photo. |
G82541 28 derailed at least four grain loads this evening as they were departing Jasper at 1933 MT. Power was 2222 and 2260.The trailing truck of ITLX 44061 jumped the tracks while going over a switch leaving Track 8, and dragged for half a mile along the ballast and through a public crossing before finally reaching the crossovers at CN Home, where it and at least 3 other cars jumped the tracks. The ITLX and two other hoppers ripped open and were spilling grain, while at least one other car remained upright but off the rails.
The conductor reported to the RTC that the speed at the time of the derailment was 16 MPH, but I'd like to see what the event recorder download has to say...
Photo here: http://tinyurl.com/3ko5og
Brendan
Yesterday afternoon, he posted a note on facebook reading as follows, with a link to his photo and a scan of The Fitzhugh's July 10th edition -- some 11 days after Brendan witnessed and photographed this derailment:
Below is a note I wrote to the newspaper after discovering that a photo of mine had been stolen and printed without my permission, with someone else's name as the credit!For comparison, check my photo versus the one in the newspaper...
Mine: http://tinyurl.com/4jzqur
Newspaper: http://tinyurl.com/6yv2dtGood morning,
Much to my surprise, I found that one of my photos had been printed in the Fitzhugh. Not only had I not given the photo to the newspaper for publishing, but the photo credit went to somebody else! For what it's worth, the photo in question is the one of the CN derailment at Home (Mile 0.5 on CN's Albreda Subdivision).
I'm not sure where or how Mr Kuzminski got a hold of my photo, but I'm thankful that I only upload low-resolution copies (which are unsuitable for printing because of the drastic loss in quality, which is quite evident in the printed photo) to my password-protected Photobucket account. I suppose I'll have to start watermarking all of my photos to ensure such blatant thievery does not occur in the future.
I'm willing to bet that all the EXIF information is still intact too, which can be easily used to prove which camera took the photo (not to mention that I'm the only one with the full-resolution image) if there is any doubt.
It's unfortunate that the Fitzhugh has printed the photo, but I doubt that you had any idea the photo was not Mr Kuzminski's and were thus unaware of any copyright infringement. The real disappointment here is that Mr Kuzminski had the gall to pass off the photo as his own. I wonder how many people have made comments to him about the photo, and I wonder how many people he told the photo wasn't actually his own?
I sincerely hope you didn't pay Mr Kuzminski for the photo, since I would have given the Fitzhugh the full-sized image to print for free (since the Fitzhugh is distributed for free). All I'd have asked is that I be properly credited for the photo and retain copyright.
Respectfully,
Brendan Frisina
Ken Kuzminski, the name credited on Brendan's photo, is the NDP candidate for Yellowhead. He is clearly concerned about rail safety as an issue. This does not give him the right to use Brendan's photo as his own to push this agenda.
The email, facebook note, and photo, incidentally, are reprinted with Brendan's full permission.
Update 11:24: The Fitzhugh replied to Brendan, stating:
"brendan: the error is mine, not Mr. Kuzminski's. He forwarded the image to the Fitzhugh and I passed it on without noticing the copyright line at the bottom of the picture. If you send an invoice, we'll pay you $50 for use and acknowledge the error in a correction. again, my apology for the error. jack danylchuk"
The photo was still submitted to the paper without permission, but the paper claims responsibility for cropping the copyright notice off and posting it as the submitter's.
Posted at 11:28 on July 14, 2008