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A photo used in a recent Virgin Mobile ad campaign is the subject of a lawsuit filed by a Texas family. The photo features a teenage girl, Alison Chang, flashing a peace sign, and was used in a variety of print and billboard advertisements. Some of the ads apparently featured the slogan “free text virgin to virgin.”
Chang’s family claims that Virgin Mobile grabbed the picture from Flickr, where one of the girl’s counselors, Justin Ho-Wee Wong, had posted the photo. Wong chose to publish the photo under a Creative Commons license which allows other peoples to republish the photo so long as they credit the photographer. However, the Chang family is claiming the ads caused “grief and humiliation,” and that the photographer was not properly credited.
Both Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons are named in the lawsuit. It should be an interesting case to see just what kind of rights, if any, people have over photos they appear in.
Since we’re not too eager to get sued, if you would like to see the photo in question, you can go here.