I was browsing through the pages of Mathrubhumi weekly (Malayalam) and I was stumbled upon their book reviews section. The reason was a cover picture of one book that they had reviewed in their literary review section which resembled a photo that I took back in 2006 in Nileshwaram, Kasaragod district. I was curious because it looked like an exact copy of the picture that I had taken. The book was "Vettachekon Enna Theyyam", a collection of short stories written by Ambikasuthan Mangad and published by Prantha Books, Kochi.

I bought a copy of the book from D C Bookshop, Thrissur to examine the picture better. I realized that they had copied the picture from the photo that I had taken and uploaded in Flickr, but did not credit me. Then I collected the contact details of Pranatha Books and I called the owner of Pranatha Books named Mr. Shaji and talked to him over the phone. At first, he denied the charge and said the picture was taken by his photographer and even before I had mentioned he asked me if my photo was published in the Internet. When I said yes, he said he would call me back and after a while he called back and admitted that his photographer had copied the image from the Internet. However, he was not ready to agree that the original source was credited to me.

I had set the following copyright information for my photo with a Creative Commons (India) License. It says:

You are free to share under the following conditions:

Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Evidently, what his publishing house did was an open violation of copyright. He said he would call me back after confirming, but that never happened. Then I sent a registered post with acknowledgment due to Pranatha Books. I also sent the contents of this letter through an e-mail. In the letter, I had mentioned the following:

1) Pay me royalty in respect of the number of books published and sold, or a lumpsum amount, which we can mutually arrive at.

2) In subsequent editions, I need proper credit given to me for the cover photo

3) A press release acknowledging my copyright over the photograph

I had also mentioned,

Be warned that if I do not hear from you within a week from the date of your receiving this, I will be constrained to initiate legal action against you at your cost, consequences and risk.

Unfortunately there has been no reply for my registered post mail so far (I sent the registered mail on February 27th, 2008 and now it has been over a month). I don't know why Prantha Books is not responding but I want them to know that I am not going easy on this and the matter does not end with this blog post. A legal notice will be issued in their name and I am all prepared to take it to the court unless they opt for a proper settlement.

My image on Flickr: (I took this photo in 2006 while I was staying in my friend and photoblogger Thulasi's house to see Theyyam for two days in his village Kakkad, at Nileshwaram, in Kasaragod district, in Kerala)




Now the cover page of the book: (evidently they photoshopped the background and put the face in half)




PS: It has now become a practice that the publishing houses/corporations misuse images from Internet for commercial purposes without any proper credit or compensation. Earlier, fellow Blogbhartian Mridula had a similar issue. She got a measly compensation and they did run a correction where they squarely named the freelancer and said they took the photo without permission. In her case it was a magazine.