Posts Tagged “Associated Newspapers”

So, for those of you new to Julie Moult’s favourite site, there’s links to my more popular images in the left hand column below my T-Shirts spam and a wallpapers page, see the link up there on the top right of the page.
And here’s a rough animation with some exquisitely disturbing music showing a little of what I’ve been up to over the past couple of years.(regulars, scroll down to the next post) :

Music by the late, great Klaus Nomi.

Having been stitched up again by the Daily Mail, I had a look at when and where my image was being posted.
Hmmm..
The same article by Julie Moult appears on Google News three times with 2 different headlines in the Mail :
“Blears falls prey to ‘Google Bomb’ Attack Of The 50-inch Woman”
Mail on Sunday, UK - 22 Aug 2008
“Blears and Harman victim of ‘Google bombing’ with Attack of the …”
Daily Mail, UK - 22 Aug 2008
(twice if you check for duplicates.)
“Blears falls prey to ‘Google Bomb’ Attack Of The 50-inch Woman”
Daily Mail, UK - 22 Aug 2008

When Associated ripped my Pete Doherty/Kate Moss image, the same story ran on :
ThisisLondon.co.uk
MailonSunday.co.uk
and
DailyMail.co.uk

According to the Daily Mail, Google Bombing is where cyber pranksters create duplicate sites linking to the same webpage to make it seem more popular.

Well, The Daily Mail is getting round my IP address ban and have nicked my Hazel Blears image.
Blears falls prey to ‘Google Bomb’ Attack Of The 50-inch Woman - Here
A screen capture of the current front page of The Daily Mail’s website :

This is despite my new notice (on the left) about image use (it even mentions The Daily Mail) and despite Associated Newspapers acknowledging having been warned about image use before.
(Associated agreed to circulate my details around relevant departments so none of their titles would use my pictures.)
From my site’s logs it seems that Associated Newspapers made many attempts to access the relevant post on my site (and image server) which were all denied but the author could have been working from home or phoned a friend.
Towards the end of the article, the truth comes out about the Google bombing accusation :
“Google yesterday denied the politicians had been subjected to Google Bombing, saying the picture’s ranking was due to several factors including popularity.”
Associated Newspapers stole my Kate Moss/Pete Doherty image earlier this year (here) when the article was actually about Russell Young’s prints of my image.
I’ve deleted all copies/posts of that one from my servers for other reasons, including the fact that I was getting way too many visits because of the popularity of the picture in Google images.
Update :
It seems The Daily Telegraph has run a very similar story here and, of course, stolen the image.
Both images have been cropped to delete my tag on the original image.

Interesting stuff going on over at The Great Architect’s site where he recounts the story so far in getting satisfaction from IPC and its magazine Nuts which has ignored every effort to communicate with the company about an image of his that Nuts Magazine ran.
The Times published (and paid him for) the same image and The Sun recently paid up for a different image of his.
Of course TGA had to be told about the use after each event by fans of his work. The Times and The Sun do seem to do the right thing….when caught.
The Great Architect produces some outstanding stuff, a fraction of which appears on his blog (he posts to B3TA.com normally). I’ve been trying to persuade him to post more frequently. Unlike me, he has a real job and still has time to produce some ridiculously funny work - some political, some entertainment based.
If he’s produced the work, it only takes a minute to post it on his blog, so do try and encourage him.

If, as it seems likely due to a couple of reasons, I have to either cut back on doing this stuff or close the site, then TGA is the place to go and get a bit of photoshopped humour. In fact, whatever happens with this site, it is the place to go - if you can all persuade him to post more frequently.

Despite chasing, IPC and Nuts Magazine still haven’t come back to me on the image they ripped off several months back when they promised to make a payment to Amnesty.
It’s EMAP and Zoo all over again and even if Zoo is eventually taken over by Bauer publishing, I WILL still be on their case.
I only hope that Bauer are mindful of industry guidelines about making every effort to find the creator of an image and realise the advertisers, who dole out prizes to those who (Zoo claims) send in the images, may be seen as liable for encouraging/supporting breach of copyright. Pretty embarrassing for the large film/computer games companies and distributors.
Maybe it’s time to dig out the recording of the phone conversations I had with Nick and Louise from Nuts Magazine.

The IP for Associated Newspapers has been blocked on this website after the Daily Mail brazenly lifted one of my images and ran it on its website along with a higher resolution version.
Now, if anyone is wondering why I haven’t commented on a certain situation going on in the blogosphere, it’s because I’ve agreed not to. Both parties have been in touch and both know that if push comes to shove then I will give a truthful account of events and produce documentation/logs of uploading etc. at the required time.