What if you knew there existed a possibility that some company, without your knowledge, grabbed a photo of your child and put it on their product and then put their product online for sale?
Koppie Koppie sells coffee mugs with photos of kids on them—and YOUR child could be one. Though this begs the question, who on earth would want a coffee mug with a photo of a stranger’s child on it, there’s actually a market for this.
Koppie Koppie has taken photos of kids from Flickr. Koppie Koppie is actually more of a social experiment, says the duo who run the site at koppie-koppie.biz. The pair claim that the drive was to raise awareness of privacy issues, yet at the same time, insist that they haven’t done anything wrong because they haven’t violated Flickr’s rules.
The images that Koppie’s founders use come with the Creative Commons licensing rights: Commercial re-use is not restricted.
Though what Koppie Koppie has done is actually legal, it still counts as a violation of the rights of the parents of those kids.
Writers use these photos for their articles, for instance, an article about parent-child relationships, but with professional child models, the parents of the young models know this. So is taking the use of the photos up a notch (or two or three?) by putting them on mugs as a display crossing the line or is to create awareness that maybe you shouldn’t be positng pictures of your children online?
These guys found a loophole and slithered through it, since the privacy policies of social media fall short with explaining the context of how images can be shared online. But they make a good point.
Going further down the continuum, we may have a company sooner or later selling T-shirts with YOUR child’s face on them—without your knowledge.
Koppie Koppie says it will take down a mug of your child within two weeks of your complaint. But think of how many parents will never read this article and know what Koppie Koppie has been up to or anyone else for that matter.
Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to BestIDTheftCompanys.com discussing identity theft prevention. Disclosures.
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