Christmas In August – Stolen photo in The Scum and its attempted removal

This is the George Hotel in Huntingdon. It’s August 29th! WTAF Green King and @oldenglishinns ?

A post shared by Uchujin (@uchujinfilms) on Aug 29, 2017 at 2:35am PDT

***UPDATED (see bottom of post)****
The Scum deleted the article :)
Walking home the other night with some friends we spotted that The George Hotel in Huntingdon had put up its Christmas display in the lobby.

It’s August 28th. Er?….WTF?

I went back the next day and posted a photo on Instagram and twitter. Documentally and Laica were with me the night before and they’d been busy talking to journalists and tweeting about it too.
I was so proud (#sarcasm) when I awoke this morning to a google alert informing me I’d made it to the illustrious pages of The Scum newspaper (sic)!!!

Christian “Documentally” Payne gets a mention too…..

But hey wait a minute! No one from The ~~Scum~~ Sun asked my permission to use the picture…….why you thieving….!

I’d made it very clear to a journalist from the Cambridge News who contacted me on twitter about using the photo what my feelings about it being used were……

Swiftly on the phone to The Sun’s “we pay for stories” line then…

The nice (sic) man I spoke too assured me that the journalist in question would be in touch today to arrange payment.

After some soul searching and valid points from twitter and friends, I decided that actually, I didn’t really want my photo in The Scum.
I called back and the nice (sic) people at the picture desk hung up on me 3 times before I finally managed to speak to someone asking for the removal of the photo.
Of course, I needed to email him because he wasn’t about to take my word for it.

I did.

Dear Sir,
further to our phone conversation this morning at 9:07 am.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4346718/cambridge-hotel-greene-king-christmas-display/

You quote my tweet ( @uchujinphoto ) and use my picture of the George hotel in Huntingdon in the above article “Christmas In August”
This was done without my permission and without anyone contacting me.

This is copyright infringement.

Please remove it and any mention of me from the article and contact me via email to let me know it has been removed.

I do not wish to be associated with your newspaper (sic) in any way shape or form.

Thank you

Mr Storey

I received this reply:-

Dear Mr Storey,

Thanks for you email. The picture in the article has been embedded, which we only usually do this after failing to make contact with the copyright holder, something that in this instance does not appear to have been done, for this I apologise.

It does seem when you were first aware of the use that you were happy about it. We would still like to run the image and I can offer payment for use of the image formally. We usually pay £50 for a social media image such as this.

If this works for you let me know and I’ll need your address and bank details to be able to make payment.

Many thanks

***

And I countered:-

Dear Mr ********,
Thanks for your prompt reply.
No attempt was made to contact me about the photo or embedding of the tweet, or of using my real name in the article (as opposed to just my twitter handle).

£50 for an image would be laughably low even if you hadn’t stolen it at which point I’d be thinking more in the region of £400 to account for the copyright infringement and waste of my time dealing with contacting you.

On reflection, I do not wish to receive any payment and would like the photo removed promptly.

I cannot in good conscience allow it to be used in a newspaper (sic) with the views of The Sun a publication that peddles racism, sexism and homophobia to the lowest common denominator of British society. In short a disgrace.

I expect confirmation of its removal promptly.

Thank you

Sincerely

Adrian Storey

An hour or so goes by and the photo is still on The Scums site, so I write another email:-

Dear Mr ********,
It’s over an hour since my reply declining your payment for illegal use of my photo and asking for its prompt removal and yet it still remains on your site.
Would you be kind enough to explain why?

Sincerely

Mr Storey

No reply so I call them asking to speak to *name redacted* only to be told it’s an embed and they won’t be removing it.
Moments later…..

Dear Mr Story,

As I mentioned previously this is a tweet embedded from twitter for which we are within our rights to do, therefore we will not be removing the tweet.

Best,

***

So one final reply from me….

Why I expected any level of decency from The Scum is beyond me. Thanks.

For all the good it will do I then wrote to the ombudsman at The Scum

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to you about an article entitled “Christmas In August” published in your online edition dated 29th August 2017

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4346718/cambridge-hotel-greene-king-christmas-display/

My photo and tweet (@uchujinphoto) are embedded in this article without my permission.I contacted your online picture desk both by phone and email and spoke to a *name redacted* concerning having the photo removed.
After initially offering me £50 for the photo, which I declined, *name redacted* then refused to remove the photo claiming it was a twitter embed and he was as such not required to remove it.

I find *name redacted* behavior offensive and question its legality.

Please reply at your earliest convenience and remove the photo, my tweet and my name from the article.

Yours sincerely

Mr Adrian Storey

In the end, I just gave up and deleted the original tweet.

As far as I’m aware that only deletes the photo from the embed and not the text of my tweet and definitely not the “quote” used in the article.

Annoys me that I had too but better that than The Scum having it.

Moral of the story (in case anyone was still in any doubt what so ever) The Scum don’t have that nickname for nothing.

***UPDATE***

So just got an email from someone higher up at The Scum:-

Basically they threw their toys out of the pram and removed the article when I deleted my tweet.

I couldn’t help but reply:-

Hi *****
Why would I want to share anything with the right wing scourge of British society that is the average Sun reader?

It’s not often I feel the need to say this but you people should be ashamed of yourselves for the disgusting things your paper prints, the lies it peddles and the negative effect it has on British life.
I’m glad it’s been removed.
A ridiculous waste of everyone’s time this morning easily solved if Mr ***** had just removed it when asked.

Best WishesMr Storey

A victory? Hardly………

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