Virgin Mobile Australia Sued for Using Teenager's Photos

A USA based family are suing Virgin Mobile Australia over an advertising campaign which features a photo of their teenage daughter - apparently without permission. The family of Alison Chang claim that Virgin Mobile (or its advertising agency) took a copy of a photo which had been uploaded to the photo sharing website, Flickr - edited it and reused it in their poster campaigns.

The photo had apparently been released by the photographer - who is Alison's youth counselor - under the Creative Commons copyright policy which permits reuse, subject to attribution to the photographer - which was included in the Virgin Mobile adverts. However, Australian codes also require a model release form to be signed where a persons image is being used in an advert, and the family say that they never gave such a permission. The photo seems to have had its copyright permissions changed to "all rights reserved".

In the advert, Virgin Mobile superimposed one of its campaign slogans, "Dump your pen friend," over Chang's picture.

The lawsuit names Virgin Mobile Australia, but oddly also includes Virgin Mobile USA - which is a completely unrelated company - and Creative Commons, which is a non-profit body which defined the copyright policies, but has no involvement in this case either.

Virgin Mobile Australia said it was "unable to comment at this stage as we have not received or seen a copy of the lawsuit in question".

In any case, it seems odd that the advertising agency would chose to take "free" photos from Flickr as opposed to just using standard stock photos from the normal agencies.

The original photo on Flickr

A photo of one of the Virgin Mobile posters

Posted to the site on 24th September 2007

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