I had a great Aloha Friday question all lined up, but it’s going to have to wait. As I was headed home, I got a call from B. She searched Twitter for #DisneySMMoms and found a tweet from a user named EsterlDode titled "#DisneySMMoms 2010 – A Not-So-Impossible" followed by a URL. Now, she recognized this as the beginning of my latest DisneySMMoms post so she clicked the link wondering what she would get. She was greeted by my webpage. Except it wasn’t my webpage.
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On Sunday, I reported about Toyota claiming to own all photos containing Toyota automobiles. I also posted the story to my photography forum (same one that the Wandering Gnome came from). Someone there (in a roundabout way) got a response from Toyota’s legal department. Here’s the response:
Response (XXXX) 11/18/2008 04:34 PM
Thank you for contacting Toyota with your comments and concerns regarding the use of vehicle images. The letter asking the DesktopNexus site to remove all images featuring a Toyota, Scion or Lexus vehicle was the result of mis-communication at Toyota, which we regret.
Copyright law protects the creative work product of artists, photographers, and other creators. Toyota respects these rights, including those of photographers who work with Toyota. Toyota purchases the rights to the images it posts on its sites, and welcomes public use of those images where we have the rights to give. However, this permission is limited to editorial or personal use, not commercial use, such as advertising any products or services. That’s because the photographers – not Toyota – retain the rights to any commercial use, and we cannot give permission to use those images for that purpose. In response the concerns raised by DesktopNexus, Toyota is working with photographers to determine what images may be used for non-commercial purposes, and what we can do to provide broader access.
We hope you will understand and appreciate the legal constraints we face.
Toyota also welcomes interested members of the public to use their own images or photography of Toyota’s vehicles, and we confirm that we have no objection to this use.
We appreciate your interest in our products.
Toyota Customer Experience
I am glad that they’ve backed down from the "all your car photos belong to us" stance, but their reply sounds too much like:
We found a couple of legitimately infringing photos on your site but rather than give you specifics we decided to be lazy and just order them all down. We figured you’d just roll over and take it, but then you had to spread the word. Now we’re facing a ton of bad PR so we’re going to limit our claims to just those originally infringing photos.
This is probably overkill now, but I took these photos intending to post them in protest of Toyota’s stance. I don’t want them going to waste, so here’s my Toyota automobile. (The dent was from someone in my office’s parking lot using my car as the signal that they backed up too far.)
I’m going to take a break from the Charleston series to present this "breaking news" article:
There’s this website called Desktop Nexus that allows users to post photos for other people to use as their desktop images. Apparently, Toyota recently decided to order Desktop Nexus to take down "all wallpapers that feature a Toyota, Scion, or Lexus." Toyota has used a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) notice to frame their demand, so they’re clearly claiming copyright over photos that contain those cars.
When pressed for clarification (since some photos could be legitimately infringing and some might not be), the site’s owner was told "all images featuring Toyota vehicles should be removed, even images with copyright belonging to others." (He was also told that a specific identification of photos Toyota is claiming infringe on their copyrights would involve time that would be billed to Desktop Nexus – something that Toyota is legally obligated to do if they want to file a proper DMCA notice.)
According to Toyota, if I posted a photo of my Toyota automobile on here (or on my personal blog or anywhere else), Toyota could sue me for copyright infringement. It wouldn’t matter that my car is completely my own (completely paid up). Since Toyota once put the car together, they claim to own perpetual rights to how that car is represented photographically.
If Toyota gets away with this, where does it end? Can Coke sue me if a coke can appears in a photo online without their permission? Does Old Navy sue me because my photo subject happens to be wearing an Old Navy shirt while posing for a photo?
Here’s the article on TorrentFreak.com: http://torrentfreak.com/toyota-claims-ownership-081114/
Look for a photo of my Toyota car to appear on this blog soon as protest. I call on all Toyota car owners to post photos of their cars to join in the protest. Non-Toyota car owners can snap a photo of the nearest Toyota car. Be considerate, though, and don’t show anything "personally identifying" about the vehicle like license plate number.
