Samsung held an Instagram photography contest called “Live In The Moment”. Passing it off as his own an Instagram user by the name of bodghan submitted a photo by renowned photographer Hengki Koentjoro. The Instagram user simply flipped the image and added a preset filter to it. Luckily, one of Koentjoro’s friends discovered the fraud and notified him before the thief could claim his prize, a $500 Samsung NX300 digital camera.
Koentjoro is quoted as saying, “Let’s warn other photographers to be careful with their work.” Samsung has since taken all photos down, disqualified Instagram user bodghan, and issued an apology to Koentjoro. Some feel that this isn’t enough. What do you think?
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I read the article and how they are going to go after Samsung, just not sure what Samsung can do here. I mean is there a tried and true method to determine that a photograph is real or not? I have not put the image through Google Images yet but I guess Samsung could have done that. Not sure if it would have been picked up since it was reversed. But I do believe Samsung acted quickly in removing the picture, and it was quick enough for them to state they had not sent out the prize for it as well. They need to go after the person who submitted it. It’s just easier to go after Samsung! So now Companies are going to think twice about having these types of contests because they may get sued.
I’m sure Samsung is covered. Contests usually state in the rules that the image you are submitting is your own work. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens all the time. I have had at least 2 of my images stolen. One was just some naive girl that thought it would be OK to use my work with her poem without asking. The other had hundreds of stolen images taken mostly from the deviant art web site that he was selling for profit. He is being sued.