BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Edinburgh Bicycle has apologised to a cartoonist for sharing one of his images online without his byline. However, the store group has begged for mercy in a classy way – getting a staffer to draw an apology.
Dave Walker’s cycling-specific cartoons are often shared online, and like many content-producers he’s happy for such sharing – but when an image of his is shared without his byline or some other form of credit it’s then difficult to know where the illustration originated and, in effect, it is then being "passed off" as seemingly belonging to the sharer.
In this case Edinburgh Bicycle’s social media team placed one of Walker’s images on the firm’s Facebook, but it had been lifted from Twitter without the all-important attribution.
Edinburgh Bicycle told BikeBiz:
"We’ve been in touch directly with Dave to apologise and he has been understanding, appreciating that it wasn’t us who removed the accreditation from his image. We have edited the original post with appropriate credit to Dave and he does not wish us to remove the post.
"The fast moving nature of social media and Twitter in particular means that images are easily seen and easily shared without a second thought. Our future policy is an adaptation of the old workshop adage ‘measure twice, cut once’, that we will check twice and send once before using images found on social media."
The firm added: "As an ethical business we respect the intellectual property of artists and we are glad to have resolved this issue with Dave, and look forward to helping promote his work on our social media in the future."
Link for impulse buying of my cycling cartoon book without really thinking through the implications: https://t.co/dfiYKPqLiK
— Dave Walker (@davewalker) June 22, 2017
Walker told BikeBiz:
"My policy, based on experience, has been not to charge for social media use as the web person usually has no budget – I tend discuss other possibilities, such as further work, or book sales instead. I am happy with the resolution in this case."
A nice apology from @EdinburghBikes https://t.co/EDugXiL91l pic.twitter.com/KrVv7a9egH
— Dave Walker (@davewalker) January 11, 2018
