Esquire, the magazine whose photos were “stolen” by the group behind #NagaLeaks, has finally responded to the “expose” about the deception of Vice President Leni Robredo and her late husband, former interior secretary Jesse Robredo. They called “We Are Collective” a “shadowy organization” that stole their photos and insisted that doing so is still against the law regardless of how “lofty” the organization’s goal might be.
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The photographers who took the photos used by Collective came out to slam the organization for using their photos without their permission.
The magazine even talked to a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property rights.
“It’s not right a gray area. If they take something that’s not theirs, it’s theft,” Atty. Roderick Vera said.
Netizens refer to “fair use” as an excuse to use the photos without permission.
However, Vera said that Collective’s use of the photos was not covered by fair use.
“Fair use is allowed if the image is to be used for teaching, commentary, a scholarly article, or a critique – but it needs to be about the image itself. In this case, the images are not being used in that manner; they’re being used to accompany the story and provide visuals for their website. That isn’t covered by fair use,” Versa said.
Esquire also addressed Collectives’ excuse about how the images are already available online when the organization said, “Tutal nagkalat na naman sa web yang picture na yan so we figure, let’s just use it.”
So can anybody really use the images on the Internet? Is it the photographers’ fault for putting their photos in the public domain?
Atty. Vera explained: “You don’t lose ownership. You may lose control, but you don’t lose ownership. It’s like parking your car on the street. It’s out there for everyone to see, but it’s still yours.”
Esquire slammed Collective for giving a “non-apology” for committing copyright infringement, pinpointing the group’s message to one of the photographers, Francisco Guerrero.
The magazine also hit Collective’s defense about how Guerrero should have sent them a message and they could have apologized and given him due credit for his photo.
“And since when it has been the victim’s responsibility to approach the thief to extract an apology?” Esquire asked.
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This is their response to how We Are Collective responded to one netizen by saying “In all honesty, he could have sent us a message and we would have apologized to him in public and we would have given him due credit for using his picture. But since it is apparent that this is being used to divert the real issue of Nagaleaks into this issue of copyright “theft,” then he should just go ahead and sue us.”
As for Collective’s excuse that they don’t have money to pay Guerrero anyway, Esquire said that this defense is not any better than the excuse of getting away with violations of the law because they have too much money.
Esquire then hit Collective about how their goal of exposing criminals involved committing a crime.
“Listen, WAC, if you claim to be doing the public some good by exposing criminals, perhaps start by, you know, not committing a crime against members of the public?” Esquire asked.
The magazine also suggested to have their photos taken down from Collective’s website if they really want to address the issue properly.
We wrote about how a Facebook page exposed Collective’s fake WHOIS info earlier, which may be enough reason to have its domain revoked.
As of writing, collective.com.ph page is inaccessible.
Source: ( esquiremag.ph )
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