They obviously knew they were doing the wrong thing when Alter Bridge removed a photographer’s watermark from an image of guitarist Mark Tremonti before posting it on their Facebook page, making the leap from private use to commercial use.
It was at this point that the photographer behind the image requested, in what is understood to be common practice, a fee for the commercial communication of his personal photo. Now, this isn’t one of those million/billion/trillion type copyright situations that have been in the news lately; this one was over a mere $75.00, enough of a fee to have the band seeing red and take to Facebook to publicly shame the photographer.
In a post that looks to have been removed from the page, either the band or someone speaking on their behalf posted: “Sorry we had to take down that picture of Mark. Got an email from the photographer wanting to charge $75.00 to display it. Needless to say we declined. Post a cool picture of Mark on our page and you’ll use it tomorrow!”
What followed was something you’d expect to see if Facebook existed around the time of Stalin. Admin removed posts that were in contempt of the band in an attempt to lay the blame on the photographer. The Music Network managed to snap some of the comments before they were taken down.
The photo was used to promote Tremonti’s debut solo single You Waste Your Time from his debut solo album All I Was. Tremonti actually caught up with Music Feeds when they were in town for Soundwave and he didn’t come across like the kind of guy who would rep this sort of injustice.
On the other hand, you can’t really see the band reacting the way the photographer did if the roles were reversed. No, if you stole one of their songs you wouldn’t get a polite email requesting a small fee, you’d get lawyers knocking at your door wanting thousands.
