[UPDATE: Yes, this is a reply to a real email message I received today. It showed every sign of being from the National Portrait Gallery, scoring only 0.8 out of a possible 5.0 on X-Spam’s spam-o-meter. I haven’t emailed my message directly to the original sender yet. I may yet tone it down, but if I do so I will change this post accordingly and keep you up with developments. Of course, if anyone thinks I should go in more heavily I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.]
Hello Bxxxxxx
Bxxxxxx Hxxxxxxx wrote:
> Dear Sir / Madam,
Sometimes I wonder myself.
> We notice you have an image on your website which is of a portrait in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. The image was detected via Digimarc tracking software and the image is attached.
The image is not on my Website. There is a text hyperlink on a page of my Website which links to the image on yours (the National Portrait Gallery’s). This is how the Web works. People with Websites embed links in the pages they host. Frequently these links point to items on other people’s Websites.
> As we do not appear to have licensed a copy of this portrait for use on your website, we wondered whether you would let us know the source from which you obtained the reproduction.
You tell me. It’s on your Website. I hope you have a licence to use it or someone might send you a form email complaining about your breach of international copyright laws.
> All photographs, scans, text and other material on the National Portrait Gallery’s website are protected by international copyright laws. Unauthorised reproduction of such content may be an infringement of such laws.
Thank you for the attached copy of the image from your Website. It’s consistent with the understanding of electronic media shown in the rest of your message that, instead of sending me a simple link to the original, you chose to embed its entire 7K of data in a 90K Word attachment.
> I look forward to hearing from you regarding this matter.
Happy to oblige. I can stop linking to your Website too if you like. Wouldn’t want people looking at pictures without an appropriate licence—not that anyone could view the portrait in question because, according to your database, it’s not currently on display.
Incidentally, PooterGeek is a satirical Website. It’s hard work trying to be witty on a daily basis and I was a bit stuck for material today. Thanks for your message. It’s funnier than most of the stuff I write. You’re not a regular reader already are you, by any chance?
all the best
Damian
What a numptie.
Brilliant. I look for to your posting his reply.
Looking around… Can see a picture of your head, which could conceivably – for the sake of this yarn at least – be hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. So tell us – do you have a licence for that head?
I daren’t link to it again lest tweed-clad National Portrait Gallery ninjas abseil in through my window, pull their cravats up over their mouths and lob stun grenades at me, but the image in question is a scan of a photograph of a moderately famous Scottish actor, pointed at from PooterGeek by the text of his name.
You mean like these ones?
I hope Hak’s got a licence to show that image on her Website.
Bring ’em on!
I hope you all have licences for using hyperlinks in the first place ?
You’re in good company – a year or so ago, Private Eye received a similar letter from someone whose full-time job was to complain about magazines misusing the term “Portakabin” (the crime usually took the form of them using it as a generic lower-case noun instead of a trademarked brand name).
Not too surprisingly, Private Eye‘s response was to use the word as much as possible, starting with the heading of every single letter in that particular issue aside from the one from the Portakabin guy – which, if memory serves, was something like “What a sad and pathetic way to make a living”.
All of which could have been predicted by anyone even vaguely familiar with the magazine, but there you go.