It looks like the perfect advertising gimmick: pictures of nude celebrities clutching fish, used to catch the eyes of potential customers of a seafood supermarket.
Only trouble is, the pictures that the Admiral seafood supermarket now has adorning the windows of its store in Kyiv on Verhniy Val Street in Podil district were hooked from the Internet completely for free –and without the owner’s permission.
And to add insult to intellectual-property-theft injury, the
pictures are from a website dedicated to the fight against overfishing, and to
protecting the planet’s marine ecosystem.
The
pictures belong to the marine conservation website Fishlove which was set up in 2009 by Nicholas Roehl, the co-owner of
the Moshimo sushi restaurant in Brighton, the United Kingdom, and actress Greta
Scacchi. The photos, featuring celebrities posing nude with a variety of marine
organisms, are meant to raise public awareness of the issue of overfishing, and
not to promote the consumption of seafood.
Roehl, when contacted by the Kyiv Post, said he was outraged
by the unauthorized use of his project’s photographs.
“You’re the second person who has kindly informed me about
this. They don’t have permission to use the images,” Roehl told the Kyiv Post.
“I’ve tried to call (the administration of the supermarket)
but they say they don’t speak English,” Roehl said.
The director of the Admiral fish supermarket, Tatyana Ananyeva,
refused to comment to the Kyiv Post on the matter of the
pictures.
But Alisa Krasnobayeva, a lawyer from the Synergy Patent Law Agency,
said this was a clear case of copyright violation. “If the creator of this
project finds out that the Admiral supermarket used (these photographs) without
permission, they will have every right to take legal action, and could force
the administration of the supermarket to
pay from Hr 12,180 to Hr 60 million 900, 000 in financial compensation,” Krasnobayeva told
the Kyiv Post.
Dozens of celebrities have taken part in the Fishlove
campaign since 2009. Among the celebrities who have been photographed nude with
fish are Sir Richard Branson, Judi Dench, Gillian Anderson, Helena
Bonham-Carter,Lizzy Jagger, Ben Kingsley, Terry Gilliam, and many others.
Kyiv
Post writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]
