Photo by (Unsplash)
Shawn Dhue is an IPilogue Writer and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.
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Powerful. Bold. Influential. These are just some of the words that ’s emphasizes for a first-generation Black law student like myself. You can only imagine how much an organization could profit from using those photos for a fundraising campaign for Indigenous, Black and people of colour (IBPOC).
Early July 2021, Roderique received a message from a friend who had visited The Hudson’s Bay Company (The Bay) where she came upon Roderique’s photo for the company’s “” initiative. The fundraising initiative sought donations “.” The online website page continues to state that it makes “.” This is ironic because The Bay was using Roderique’s image and face without her consent.
Roderique’s Response
Roderique took to Twitter when she received a text message from her friend saying, “.” Since Roderique was unaware of the advertisement and was not doing work for The Bay, she tweeted the following: “”
Screenshot from .
As seen in the image above, The Bay replied: “.” The Bay made a statement to CBC News saying the picture was taken from the photographer’s () as inspiration, but was never changed. The Bay has since removed the image from all advertising.
Roderique said that “.” The Bay has yet to release further statements about the matter or comment on whether the company will take further action. Roderique said she would like to see a financial donation as this “mistake” happens too often to IBPOC creation.
The Legal Side
An entity’s unauthorized use of a photographer’s image engages many legal issues: , , and , to name a few. Although few laws concern the use of an image without consent, the , the , the , and the address these legal issues. In this post, I will focus on the Copyright Act.
Under s. 13(1) of the Copyright Act, “.” In other words, every photographer owns the photos that they take. According to section 6 of the Act, ownership will last, until otherwise expressed, for “.” Accordingly, the photo rightly belongs to Luis Mora, the original photographer. Roderique noted that .
However, the Act includes an exception. states that if the photographer was contracted for work, the photos taken belong to their employer. Additionally, under , the photographer can contract out of this complete assignment of rights, and instead grant certain rights in the photo instead of full ownership. Given the comments made, Roderique and The Globe and Mail have some rights over the original image. Nevertheless, Roderqiue maintains that .
The Importance
Although mistakes do happen, I noticed an abundance of comments online from people who could not see the importance of this issue while researching this matter. Society has a long history of profiting off the work of Black people without giving appropriate recognition or credit. For example, some social media platforms have ned Black content creators for criticizing the lack of credit they receive, all while White creators profit by copying Black creators’ content.
The importance of the issue is not a matter of money or fame, but of dignity and recognition for IBPOC’s hard work. Society is long overdue to give IBPOC the credit they deserve. Large corporations and entities that are not a part of the IBPOC community especially need to stop profiting from IBPOCs’ hard work without crediting its creators.