Photographer’s Stolen Work Used to Hock Merch in Lufthansa In-Flight Magazine

We probably shouldn’t be surprised at stories of photo copyright infringements, especially after our report the other day on Copytrack and their estimate that some several billion pictures are stolen every single day.

But familiarity doesn’t mean that we are tired of these stories – at least not yet.

Probably the biggest attraction to these tales of copyright woe is just how brazen some of them can be.

Like this story involving major German international airline Lufthansa and an in-flight magazine ad for a lady’s watch.

Apparently Swiss-made watch company Bellevue allegedly stole a photograph from New York City-based fashion photographer Dani Diamond who had never licensed the photo in question for commercial use.

The theft was brought to Diamond’s attention via one of his fans which noticed the ad in the magazine back in 2017 according to PetaPixel.

If that’s not a huge benefit of maintaining a public following, we don’t know what is.

Diamond says that the photo was not copyrighted with the US Copyright Office and confirmed his fan’s story by locating the same product and infringing photo on Lufthansa’s website.

There’s even an edited image where the company put the watch – albeit, upside down – on the model’s wrist.

You can view the original image by clicking here, and the modified image by clicking here.

That’s pretty flagrant.

Of course, advice poured in from all corners of the Internet, with some people urging him to fight the good fight and others reminding him of the painful journey that suing a large corporation can be.

Uniquely, Diamond isn’t interested in pursuing legal action against the watch company.

He said, “It honestly doesn’t bother me that my image was stolen…It happens so often that I’ve given up using my energy on it and prefer to just concentrate on making a living shooting fashion and use my energy there.”

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.