Copycat? Photographer accuses PM Modi's team of stealing his photo

Images getting shared without due credit is something that gets the goat of most photographers, but in the case of US-based photographer Bimal Nepal, the person he’s accusing of plagiarism happens to be none other than the Prime Minister of India. Or more specifically Modi’s social media team. So what exactly happened? Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Facebook account shared a picture on the occasion of Dhanteras with the message, “Greetings on Dhanteras. May Lord Dhanvantari bless us with prosperity, joy and good health.” Check out the Facebook post below:

Post by Narendra Modi.

However it turns out that Nepal had clicked the original image, one with just the diyas and not the lighting in the background as his Facebook cover photo. He then followed it up with another post, questioning why his picture had been used without credit being given. He wrote : “One of my photographs has been used by one of my greatest heroes, a true leader Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Facebook page. I shot this photo in my dining room last year with the help of my daughter Abina. She set up the candle lights on Diwali in our home in Cambridge Massachusetts. I am truly honored! My greatest question and concern is - there is no credit for the photographer?! What will happen so called © copyright issue? He did not ask for the permission. Any suggestion?” [caption id=“attachment_1770697” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The two pictures at the heart of the controversy. Screenshot from Facebook[/caption] Bimal’s story has managed to get quite a response with BuzzFeed to Hindustan Times all reporting on the same. For now, there was no known response from Modi’s team on the matter which only provoked netizens further and the first comment on Modi’s Dhanteras greeting happened to be a photographer who cheekily gave credit to Nepal for the photograph. The Prime Minister’s team has remained mum on the matter, choosing to ignore it for now, perhaps in order to avoid fuelling the controversy further. However, the offending post remains on the page, for now. However, from the controversy it seems to be clear that someone from Modi’s social media team thought it was okay to take the picture that Nepal had put up, then modify it and post it on behalf of the PM. The only problem is that they didn’t think that it was important to give credit. With social media, the issue of who to credit for which photograph has become a complicated one. While photographers and celebrities tend to post their pictures openly on social media, it is implied that when someone borrows a picture, they must give due credit. For instance, even Instagram photos shared by celebrities, while they are technically available for public use, need to be credited to the concerned celebrity. In the case of photographers, it gets trickier. Sure they might post pictures on Facebook or Flickr, but that doesn’t mean they are giving up copyright issues on the photo. For instance Nepal’s photo was first posted in 2012 on Flickr but it clearly states that all copyrights are reserved on the photo. (Interestingly Bimal says he shot the photo last year, which would be 2013, but from the Flickr date it appears to have been shot much before.) Flickr allows photographers to maintain copyrights on their work or share under creative commons, which would be freely shareable. However even under Creative Commons, authors can put conditions on how their work can be shared (whether sharing for commercial purposes like ads is allowed). In the case of Facebook, even if a picture is posted and the settings are public, Facebook’s rules clearly state that the author of the post is the owner of the content and if someone else uploads it and tries to pass it off as their own, then the owner can report them. In the case of the whole Modi, Facebook post controversy, the ideal solution would have been for the prime minister’s social media team to contact Nepal and get the requested permission for sharing the photo, which seems like it might have happened given his admiration for the prime minister. Given that Modi’s team chose to overlook such basic etiquette, Nepal’s outrage is justified.