Photos found on a website where I used to work...

... but i wasn't working there as a photographer. They seem to be co-operating when i have questioned them about it - being from UK i wouldn't necessarily be all demanding and shouty about them taking them off the website or crediting me - but where do i stand legally if they stop co-operating? Anyone had experience with this?

Chrispie

HI all!

i have the same problem. i used to work for a dc in greece last summer (2007) as a photographer, quit after the season for commission reasons and now i find some of my best pics on their site. it used to be just a handful, but now they redesigned and its about 20. no mention of my name. they didn´t even erase the copyright notice i put at the bottom of each pic. on the site, it´s not readable because of the resolution, but i recognize it. i have had these pics (or some of them) on my flickr acc, as copyrighted for some time. is there anything i can do? i know if i contact them, they´ll ignore me, because without those, they wouldn´t have any decent pics to put on their site. and being greeks, the idea of paying me for the licence would be ridiculous to them. not being paid adequately was my reason for quitting in the fist place. they didn´t even ASK if they could use them ffs

angry hellas

/edit: websites to prove it:

my image on flickr: click me

their website: click again (select diving sites>discover scuba.) all 8 of these are mine(and more on the site), see the one with the bubbles?

I'm sorry to say that if you were employed to take photographs, your employer owns the copyright to the pictures you made while you were employed by them. If you took pictures and then sold them a license to use them, then that would be a different matter.

I am self-employed but a lot of my work is used by one magazine. It pays me a fee for a license to use my pictures. If the owners had put me on their regular payroll (that would have been a clever thing to do by them, in my opinion) they would own my picture library.

hey!

that wouldn't happen to be diver magazine, would it? your name rings a bell there...

i'm not talking about "real" work, as in with written contracts and all that. i used to be an instructor there and switched to photos. written contracts are rarely seen in the holiday diving industry. so without any papers, in a legal sense, i was a tourist taking pictures there. does that change the situation?

hellas