.jpg)
This photo of Edgewater Police Chief Dave Arcieri is copyright protected by Headline Surfer / NSB News LLC, but that didn't stop two Orlando stations from taking it off the Internet search engines and passing it off as their own in their reporting of 'the big story' on the police chief being placed on administrative leave. The photo was used in their respective news broadcasts. WKMG has our photo listed as its own and WFTV has our photo front and center on its video online after it was shown on the TV news.
EDGEWATER -- As someone who has built this 24/7 Internet website from scratch nearly five years ago, I take great pride in the volume of original stories, blogs, photos,videos and graphics elements amassed. With that said, I will not sit idly by while larger media outlets like Orlando TV stations WKMG and WFTV use one of our copyrighted photo images as their own in reporting "the big story."
Headline Surfer's photo of Edgewater Police Chief Dave Arcieri is copied right into the front of the WFTV video report broadcast throughout Central Florida and as shown here from the onlinr promo pages of the TV station's website.
Below here what the video looks like when the online headline for the video is clicked on WFTV before it is played.
Our photo of Edgewater Police Chief Dave Arcieri in full uniform is shown in the Internet search engines with WKMG identifying it as theirs.
WFTV took our photo of Arcieri and put it right at the front of their video coverage, which was shown over the airwaves Thursday.
It's bad enough that they used our photo, but to add insult to injury, they passed it off as their own.
WKMG is shown here in the Google images search engine as the owner of the photo of Edgewater Police Chief Dave Arcieri after it was used by the Orlando station without prior approval from Headline Surfer / NSDB News LLC.
I could only dream of having my images shown to as many viewers throughout Central Florida as they have with their multi-million dollar advertising budgets. But Headline Surfer is a small operation with one paid employee who writes all of the stories, shoots most of the photos and videos, solicits the advertising, does the marketing and uploads and maintains the site continuously.
Thankfully, I have the volunteer assistance and talent of my wife, Serafina, in helping me with the photos, videos and uploading of images and content.
All of our materials are clearly marked as copyright intellectual property. Even the major search engines identify the photo as belonging to NSBNews.net.
It's pretty rotten that these Central Florida media giants would take a photo from this media outlet where I am the sole employee, who provides for his family from what little advertising, though we're experienced tremendous growth in daily visitors in recent months.
That these two TV giants resorted to using our photo is a testament to our hyper-local coverage, especially in our initial core coverage area of New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater and Oak Hill. Had I not been bedridden, I would have brought this issue to light much sooner. As it is, I was last with the reporting on Arcieri; not out of incompetence or laziness, but personal illness.
Regardless, these media outlets have no right to use our copyright images and pass them off to the public as their own. It's outright theft of our intellectual property.
Whenever I've needed a copy of a photo or video, I've always made a point of calling in advance and asking permission of a news producer or webmaster and have given full credit to the media source.
That wasn't done here. No phone call. No email. No nothing. That these TV stations needed my photograph to enhance build the strength of their news coverage and thus advertising, really irks me.
It's not right and they'll be hearing from my attorney ASAP.