Thursday, June 11, 2009

Czech Grocery Store uses Missouri Blogger's Family Photo for Advertising

A grocery store in the Czech Republic found the perfect family to promote its local delivery service. They were young, attractive, and the children had infectious smiles.

But the family had been plucked from a photo in cyberspace, and the stars had no idea they were endorsing a foreign grocer in an advertisement thousands of miles away. [Link]
A virtual Facebook friend saw the "life-size ad", took a photo of it, and sent it to the blogger. The article goes on to say that if this happened in the US, laws are such the response would be easy. You would just need to go to the company and say "show me the money." Things get a little more complicated with foreign countries.

This is something to consider by anyone who posts family photos on the web. The blogger "says she has learned an important lesson about posting pictures online: Always use low-resolution images (so they don't look so good when enlarged) or stick a digital watermark on the photo."

2 comments:

Greta Koehl said...

Interesting story and food for thought. Although we have all probably considered various ways in which people might take material from our blogs and use it, this is certainly one I hadn't thought of. It would certainly feel strange to see a picture of my family in a foreign advertisement.

Danielle said...

I read this on her blog. I was shocked but there are so many photos online and it is so easy to copy an image. So who knows who could be using our photos!