[laxmanrk]

It seems very cheap for Mahindra to do this...

But, I think they might have hired an ad agency or marketing agency to take care of this and hence it will be their liability in the end, but Mahindra should have been aware where the images are coming from since its a product they are selling.

Will be very interesting to see their take on this when this does come to light to them.

Lets hope its not taken in a light vibe and something is done about it.

[sleepyk]

Originally Posted by amolpol

Today morning as I was checking on my usual whatsapp groups, a friend of mine posted a picture of the www.mahindrathar.com website displaying one of my pictures taken in Jan 2013. Now that wasn't something I expected to see as the first thing in the morning, and I was more infuriated than flattered about having my jeep on the front page of the officlal Thar homepage.

The best thing would be to send off a tweet to Anand Mahindra himself.
He is quite active on Twitter, and this is something that he would take an interest in.

[1lokesh]

So I thought to delve deeper into the modus-operandi of this.
started off with snipping tool to cut the image on screen as put up in OP - the original FB image - result: a 71kb image
next search google images by uploading this 71kb image - google identifies this image with the keyword "mahindra jeep hd" - notice the word "HD" in the keyword? means that this word "HD" is one of the most used suffix with people searching for mahindra jeep's pics/images.

Next, on the results page, go to "view similar images" - this is where all your images can be found in decent resolution. One I got from a website called imgkids.com - that was 691kb and next from tbhp thread "all tbhp 4x4 jeep pics" which was 1.09mb. Now this is the one that can be easily corrected/photoshopped. May have been picked up from the forum thread itself directly!

By the way both these images carry "Team-Bhp.com copyright respective owners" water mark at the lower left corner - which obviously has been removed by Mahindra's agency.
So this is an 'open and shut' case of deliberate and intentional plagiarism. As everyone else has suggested, do take it up with mahindra guys officially and in written (preferably through registered AD) manner. They should be brought to book on such repeated offences.

[condor]

Mahindra vehicle designs are often quite familiar. What's in a pic ?

[mac187]

This is a sad thing to see. Erasing your watermark and then using it shows malicious intent. Also, not to mention the sad ad (IND vs SA) really! Its the same jeep retards. What was the brief? "Just bill the client"???

I for one have shared your post on FB. Hope to see Mahindra to step-in and stop this blatant plagiarism. Try the tweeting it to Anand Mahindra, in the past we have seen someone from his office stepping in. I am not on twitter, else would have done it myself.

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by laxmanrk

It seems very cheap for Mahindra to do this...

Will be very interesting to see their take on this when this does come to light to them.

Lets hope its not taken in a light vibe and something is done about it.

Well, I am rather disgusted in the way Mahindra has handled or I should say mis-handled this issue. They have resorted to a quiet cowardly cover-up operation rather than openly admitting their mistake and making up for it. As a large organization I would have expected them to hold their morals higher up and not between their rear.

My picture has been taken down from the mahindrathar.com website so I'm assuming the company guys did act on it to prevent any further damage. But they haven't really addressed the real issue of plagiarism that has already occurred.

Given the social media posts, it did catch their attention and by evening on April 7th, I got a call from the Sr Brand Manager for Mahindra Adventure. He was responding to some tweets or posts by a friend of my friend who passed on my contact information to call. Since he's a part of the TBHP forum, I'm going to refrain from any personal attacks here since I know it violates the forum rules and I don't want to engage in name calling myself. However, he was representing the company in that conversation and so I don't think its solely directed to him but also to the company. Anway, the manner in which the whole matter was heard and dismissed as an innocent mistake by the ad agency didn't really show any remorse on the Mahindra Adventure teams' part.

Here's a quick summary of our discussion:

- The gentleman called to apologize about the issue, a quick 2 second sorry was enough is what they thought

- He then tried to explain to me how they ad agency has an image bank of pictures where they don't need to ask for copyright permissions and somehow my images had made to that repository.

- When I asked him how two of my images made it to the repository, there was no concrete answer to that. Remember, it was not a question of one of my images being used once, but two images being used on different occasions.

- His approach seemed pretty casual when I questioned him as to why the agency had altered my images and removed watermarks etc. He said they won't do it, but reality says otherwise.

- He then got to the point of asking me what I'd like them to do to which I told them that I'd want them that I needed three things to happen:
1. Send me a written acknowledgement of the issue and apologize.
2. They could continue using my picture if they wished to, but with credits duly given to me as the photographer.
3. Pay me a fair market value compensation for the usage of the picture. I told him I didn't know how much this would be and I'm not being greedy about money here, but the reason I'd want this was so they realize that nothing in this world comes for free. So if they make mistakes, they better be ready to pay for those as well in the future.

- Post this he said that he'll have to come back to me after internal discussions and I haven't gotten any form of correspondence from him or the company ever since.

In the past, I have been able to get attention of Mr Mahindra on some of the appalling service experiences I've had with them. However, in this instance, the CEO office chose to keep quiet in spite of receiving two emails from me. I know for sure that the emails have reached them so it's not a question of whether they got them or not. A few folks suggested I should tweet to Anand Mahindra and that may catch his attention. So I created a twitter account specifically for this and tweeted it to him yesterday but I see no response there as well.

Imagine if they would have asked me for permission before using my picture on their website, I would have been happy to send them a hi-res copy and probably posted all good stuff on social media. But by stealing the pictures, they caused more harm than they imagined. And now that it has happened, I'm not demanding for lakhs of rupees in compensation, the intent was never to make money or get publicity from this. All I need was fair treatment from the company based on their wrong doing. Looks like that is too much to ask from the M&M organization.

Shame on you Mahindra.....you shall never RISE!

[theexperthand]

Originally Posted by amolpol

A few folks suggested I should tweet to Anand Mahindra and that may catch his attention. So I created a twitter account specifically for this and tweeted it to him yesterday but I see no response there as well.

In fact, I did tweet about this, including a link to this thread to Anand Mahindra, yesterday morning itself - but he has been silent about this.

--Anoop

[rohansachar]

Originally Posted by amolpol

Imagine if they would have asked me for permission before using my picture on their website, I would have been happy to send them a hi-res copy and probably posted all good stuff on social media. But by stealing the pictures, they caused more harm than they imagined. And now that it has happened, I'm not demanding for lakhs of rupees in compensation, the intent was never to make money or get publicity from this. All I need was fair treatment from the company based on their wrong doing. Looks like that is too much to ask from the M&M organization.

Shame on you Mahindra.....you shall never RISE!

Hi Amol,

By any chance, had you ever shared the picture with them, directly or via any social handle? Because ALL policies work in your favor. I'm implying, if they've taken the same from your account, it's direct content theft, HOWEVER, even if you had shared it with the page directly, Facebook guidelines say it's YOUR property:


However Amol, despite I'm supporting your cause, I still feel that the solution here should be:

• Mahindra stopping uncredited use of content
• Putting up your image again with credit to you since it was active all this while

What I'm trying to imply after the above two are respectfully done, you should take pride in the fact the brand you own acknowledges you & showcases it's might with your content.

My image is currently on the HomePage of Safari SOUL[with my permission], & I'm PROUD of it.
http://safari.tatamotors.com/soul/
Screenshot:


Regards,
Rohan

Mod Note: Post edited. Please don't quote a large post in its entirety- makes things difficult for our small-screen users.

[Kaumad]

Mahindra should've ensured this didn't happen in the first place. Well, it did. Probably the ad agency's mistake.
They called up, they apologized.
For all the noise you have made about moral high ground and calling Mahindra disgusting and shameless, I am quite shocked that you asked for money as compensation.
Its a photograph of your car, for crying our loud! Get over it man.

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by rohansachar

Hi Amol,

By any chance, had you ever shared the picture with them, directly or via any social handle? Because ALL policies work in your favor. I'm implying, if they've taken the same from your account, it's direct content theft, HOWEVER, even if you had shared it with the page directly, Facebook guidelines say it's YOUR property:

Well you're right Rohan, I'm still the rightful owner of the image copyrights and posting it on Facebook doesnot entitle anyone to use the images for commercial and/or other purposes without written consent from me. Sadly, I don't think everyone understands that fact.

Originally Posted by rohansachar

My image is currently on the HomePage of Safari SOUL[with my permission], & I'm PROUD of it.

Regards,
Rohan

Absolutely true! Had M&M asked me for those pictures and published it, I wouldn't have had any issues at all. Infact, I would have probably shared the page myself talking about how cool it is to feature my image on the product homepage. Alas!

You know, I've had my jeep pictures published for a magazine advertisement for one of the local Bangalore based firm dealing in jeep accessories. Again, it was a free deal since they asked nicely.

Originally Posted by Kaumad

Mahindra should've ensured this didn't happen in the first place. Well, it did. Probably the ad agency's mistake.
They called up, they apologized.

A casual apology is not enough, could be for you but not for me. My thing is, if you don't mean to say sorry, better not say it rather than just blurting it out of your mouth.

Originally Posted by Kaumad

For all the noise you have made about moral high ground and calling Mahindra disgusting and shameless, I am quite shocked that you asked for money as compensation.
Its a photograph of your car, for crying our loud! Get over it man.

Well, I'm sure Mahindra pays the ad agency peanuts or may be sends them some things in kind which is why I shouldn't be asking for money as compensation. Is that what you're thinking? I haven't asked for anything beyond what I deserve, I asked for fair market compensation of what they'd pay for that image which isn't wrong IMHO.

They took something that belongs to me and used it to make money by means of an advertisement. They're not doing charity with the money they make in the Mahindra Adventure events, so why should I be philanthropic about the issue.

And they haven't publicly owned up the issue yet, so why shouldn't I call them out on their ethics. And yes, it's a photograph of my jeep, so what, it still gives nobody a right to steal it and use it for their gains. What about the other gentleman whose family picture was stolen for an internal memo by Mahindra? I'm sure there'll be more of such incidents that haven't been discovered yet.

Again, I should emphasize that this isn't something that's going to make me money, I earn enough already. It is about teaching a lesson to an organization who thinks they could conveniently walk away with robbery and nobody's going to do anything about it.

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters” ― Albert Einstein

[rohansachar]

Originally Posted by amolpol

Absolutely true! Had M&M asked me for those pictures and published it, I wouldn't have had any issues at all. Infact, I would have probably shared the page myself talking about how cool it is to feature my image on the product homepage. Alas!

You know, I've had my jeep pictures published for a magazine advertisement for one of the local Bangalore based firm dealing in jeep accessories. Again, it was a free deal since they asked nicely.

From what I'm getting as a sense, you do have a lot pride in your purchase. My proposed solution:

• Get it in writing from M&M a mistake was made with respect to content was used
• Get your image back up on Thar Page with due credit & it should stay so till the equal duration as the image was up without credit [fair making up]

It's just a recommendation friend.



Regards,
Rohan

[selvagp]

Originally Posted by amolpol

You know, I've had my jeep pictures published for a magazine advertisement for one of the local Bangalore based firm dealing in jeep accessories. Again, it was a free deal since they asked nicely.




“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters” ― Albert Einstein

Noticed a small matter here. Your picture of the jeep is with a number plate that I couldn't read, but the one on the website in the OP has masked the number plate. As far as I understand it is your own pic and your own Jeep. Please get the right number plate.

[amolpol]

So here's how I'd like to close the issue:

- Mahindra got the ad agency to send me an email accepting their mistake
- They offered me a good will compensation for the two images that were used, paltry sum but I wasn't expecting huge money anyway
- They've asked me if I'm okay to have my images published, to which I've already mentioned that I wouldn't have had a problem if they gave due credit and/or asked permission to use

It would have been better if there was some sort of ongoing communication or setting up of timeframe expectations for a response to avoid the heartburn. The silence from the executive team was killing!

Mods, can you edit the title to say "now resolved" or something similar.

Thank you for all those who supported the issue and no hard feelings to those who thought this was over-rated.

Justice is served!

Thanks - Amol

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by Kaumad

I am quite shocked that you asked for money as compensation.
Its a photograph of your car, for crying our loud! Get over it man.

Of course he should be compensated. Nothing is free in this world.

Although it is a topic of discussion for another thread, the act of giving out free photos by amateurs to publications is not right in so many ways.
Most importantly, the professional photographers are robbed of their source of income. For you and me it is a hobby but for some it is their bread and butter.
Secondly, you are not doing this for charity. It is not like these organizations don't have money to pay for a proper photo shoot of their cars.

[Sudipto-S-Team]

I do not know why it is being said in the headline that the matter has been resolved. Does the OP think it has been resolved? I am not too sure after reading the posts.

Meanwhile, one of my travel photographs was lifted off this forum a few years ago, and used by a leading Bengali daily for a travel feature. I laughed that such a huge organisation had to resort to this. The photograph was taken with a small digital camera. Most mobile phones these days come with better cameras.

Friends who saw the article and knew my car called me and informed me about the theft. We had a big laugh and forgot about it.

Having worked in a newspaper I know under what circumstances they have to do it. Generally it is more to do with time constraint than money.

I think I even posted the issue here. In fact I think once posted on a forum the image belongs as much to the forum as to the original photographer.

But I agree Mahindra should have handled the issue a little more sensitively.

Incidentally, on behalf of my company I buy images from reputed photographers. For one time usage, like in a calendar, I pay him Rs 2500 for each image. And mind you they are big names. Giving photo credit to the photographer in an ad is unheard of - even if you are a Raghu Rai.