Owl City and my 15 Seconds of Pure Fame
People have been asking what happened with my photograph and Owl City. I’ve been fairly tight lipped about the whole thing. Any fame I received from this has come and gone. Now that’s settled and I’m paid I’ll go ahead and give the story as best I can without Owl City or Universal Motown Republic Group, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc. (“Universal”), having any reason to try and sue me.
On January 4th 2010 I received an email from a seemingly random guy on the internet. Apparently this band I had never heard of was using one of my pictures on their web site.
Trevor
to me
i like your picture. i guess owl city does as well…http://www.owlcitymusic.com/gallery.aspx?fid=2576&phid=2547
i hope they paid you a lot for its use.
Trevor
When people ask me if I’ve heard the latest [Insert Band Name Here] song I’m the pretentious prick that has to point out that I don’t listen to the radio and only have my iPod ergo I am totally unaware of new music and you should know this; why did you just waste both our time asking? So true to my ignorance when I received this email I had no clue who Owl City was (#4 in iTunes then) and just assumed they were some crappy Indie band that defaced my photo.
I was at work and didn’t have a lot time to dedicate to this picture problem. I went to the site and found a contact address then shot over an email.
Ben Eubank
to ocmgm
Hello!
I’m usually pretty good about people cruisin’ over to my FlickR page and using my photo for things. Typically I get an email asking first, which helps, especially given that I don’t even allow creative commons license on it. In your case however no one has contacted me and there is an ugly photoshop lens flare and some strange emo guy that someone has felt the need to place over the picture. Not really a fan of this.
Not shown is the attachment showing my ownership of the photo and it’s publication on FlickR which has since been removed.
Leaving work I went home and thought nothing more of it really. When my roommate got in from work I mentioned to him that some [nice] band was using my photo without permission. Well, okay, apparently they’re a little more popular than I thought – interesting.
I don’t know this Trevor character was but later that night I started getting emails coming from my site and internetland telling me much more about the situation. My art work was used in a multitude of places, not just on the website. Most notably it part of the actual CD Artwork. One email I received went as far as giving me LinkedIn pages for some of the people responsible for the CD and the credited artist. It was odd to have all these random strangers come to my aid.
After it finally dawned on me that this might be slightly bigger than I had originally made it out to be I received two more emails. One was from Owl City saying they had purchased the images from an artist named Imran Khan and forwarded my email off to Universal Motown Republic Group to elaborate more and another from some guy who ran a website claiming not to be a big fan of Owl City. Because I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on and I sort of wanted to get paid for my efforts I asked Steve, the notfan, to please not publish anything more than a small blurb and not make any assumptions about what happened (i.e. please don’t say they stole anything until we know more).
Of course he didn’t listen and thus began my fifteen seconds of internet fame. Every one says you should get 15 minutes but I can’t possibly see how I could claim to have achieved more fame than the band itself. Shortly after other sites started copying the article and I got a few more emails from people letting me know that OC was using my work.
The next day I was contacted by guy from the record company asking if I could further prove the ownership of the photo and to please not blog about this on the internet saying “Adam” stole my artwork. Universal man was going to follow up with the artist, using the evidence I gave him, and see what he said when the ownership came into question.
As it turns out the artist said he was just that, an artist, not a photographer and had downloaded my photo from the internet then figured he could use it for commercial purposes. To my understanding he did all the album artwork and that raises an eyebrow but I’m not going to openly speculate on what that could mean any further.
Once actual ownership was established we went back and forth about a month discussing payout numbers ranging from incredibly low to considerably low. Fast forwarding a bit we settled on stupidly low the proper paperwork was ultimately signed and I sold out to The Man.
I’ve been told that I will be credited in future reprints of the album and even given a free copy. I’ll believe that when I see it because that’s one thing I do not have in writing. So neither Owl City or Universal Music purposely used my work, they’ve paid me for my picture and I’m not quite sure what happened to Mr. Kahn. The whole thing has been quite a pain in the ass and I’m rather positive it will not lead to future sales of my photography but I guess it’s fun to say I was part of something once.
OH BEN.I can't believe you didn't sucker them in for a considerably LARGE amount!A bit ridiculous this guy still attempted to state that "not a photographer and figured he could use it for commercial purposes."Come on, you can't be that dumb after producing and releasing an album. I'm sure you're going to realize that each person associated with the product are going to want some sort of recognition, even if it's just mentioning their
Unless you were planning on fronting my legal fees a large amount wasn't going to h
I was just pulling your chain. It appears to be true about his attempt to get away with using your photo without giving due credit.I sent your blog post link to two guys on twitter who have been discussing issues similar to this. One of them I know takes photographs for personal joy/use but has run into request to use his photos for random things. He isn't sure exactly what to d
OH BEN.I can't believe you didn't sucker them in for a considerably LARGE amount!A bit ridiculous this guy still attempted to state that "not a photographer and figured he could use it for commercial purposes."Come on, you can't be that dumb after producing and releasing an album. I'm sure you're going to realize that each person associated with the product are going to want some sort of recognition, even if it's just mentioning their name.
Unless you were planning on fronting my legal fees a large amount wasn't going to happen.
I was just pulling your chain. It appears to be true about his attempt to get away with using your photo without giving due credit.I sent your blog post link to two guys on twitter who have been discussing issues similar to this. One of them I know takes photographs for personal joy/use but has run into request to use his photos for random things. He isn't sure exactly what to do yet.
What to do? Justin I sold the rights to the photo to the record company. There isn't anything left to do. I posted this because the situation is over, not on
What to do? Justin I sold the rights to the photo to the record company. There isn't anything left to do. I posted this because the situation is over, not on going.
I bet you nothing happened to Mr. Kahn. He is sipping his bubbly and sitting in his hot tub. He probably does this all the time and gets away with it. Hopefully you get a little satisfaction knowing that your art is worth ripping off, and maybe one day when you can afford the legal fees, you will come out o
I understand that it's over. I'm simply commenting on it. I wasn't even aware this was going on. The reason I mentioned that I sent the post to two friends is simply to show them what happened, not for them to chime in on what you should do. One of them is like you, regularly takes photographs for personal purposes and posts them on the web. I am under the assumption this situation has never happened to him and it may offer insight to anything he could do to prevent it from happening t
I bet you nothing happened to Mr. Kahn. He is sipping his bubbly and sitting in his hot tub. He probably does this all the time and gets away with it. Hopefully you get a little satisfaction knowing that your art is worth ripping off, and maybe one day when you can afford the legal fees, you will come out on top.
I understand that it's over. I'm simply commenting on it. I wasn't even aware this was going on. The reason I mentioned that I sent the post to two friends is simply to show them what happened, not for them to chime in on what you should do. One of them is like you, regularly takes photographs for personal purposes and posts them on the web. I am under the assumption this situation has never happened to him and it may offer insight to anything he could do to prevent it from happening to him.