Flickr Is Going To Cost Virgin Mobile Millions Of Dollars

Host, an Australian advertising agency, has gotten itself into quite the pickle. The small shop set out to highlight Virgin Mobile’s text services by using images from Flickr under the Creative Commons license for billboards, newspaper ads and a web site. Host remembered to include the photographers’ URLs and all looked well. Most people were pleased by their 15 minutes of fame. However, Host failed to realize that the license covers the photographer’s copyright, but not necessarily the people in the pictures, which means that a bunch of people are pissed off. Especially since they feel as though Virgin Mobile is insulting them with the copy. With taglines like, “People who talk in lifts have bad breath,” you can’t really blame them.

Yeah… we get it. Text instead, but that tagline is out of place if you ask us. What are you going to do – text the person next to you in the lift, so as not to smell their garlic breath? Or, is it supposed to be that you have bad breath, so you should text in the elevator rather than make a call? Hmmm…. What? Meanwhile, they even used an image of the underage (ah crap! That’s gonna hurt in the lawsuit) Alice Chang who is not at all happy about it.

So, while we’re sure that Host thought they were being clever by roping in real people, dudes… you can’t just forget about legality and consumer feelings. It’s gone way beyond Australia and all over the internet. Brace yourselves for a big fat lawsuit.

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