Two weeks after my own situation with Viacom was resolved (let us hope, and you can read much more about it here), now comes word that another major corporation is taking a person’s material without permission and using it commercially. But this time it’s much worse than anything I went through with my own digital copyright battle.

16-year old Alison Chang from Texas was attending a Christian camp in Australia. A camp counselor took her picture and uploaded it to photo-sharing site Flickr. Well, Virgin Mobile found that picture and without asking anyone’s permission – including Miss Chang’s – they used it in a major (and very expensive) advertising campaign. Suddenly Chang’s picture was all over the place with the caption “Dump your pen friend” and the words “Virgin to virgin”. Here’s the story at The Register and here is a photo of Virgin’s vulgar use of Chang’s ...