TheBrandywine.com: Your guide to the Brandywine Valley

When The Chadds Ford Post violated our copyright by publishing a photo taken from TheBrandywine.com without permission, proper credit or compensation – it’s was annoying. Then the Journal Register Company Suburban Philadelphia Newspapers, the company that owns The Chadds Ford Post and 11 others in the greater Philadelphia/Brandywine Valley area did it again.

Dear Mr. Bob Jelenic, I am writing to make you aware of two copyright violations by your newspapers, namely “The Chadds Ford Post” and the “Delaware County Times”.

In the Chadds Ford Post, March 14-20, 2002, page A6 (OPINIONS) a four column wide photo of “Banjo, the fence sitting horse” appeared above the fold. That photo was That photo was taken from my Web site, TheBrandywine.com, and reprinted without permission. In the paper, the credit line says, “Courtesy photo”. After seeing the photo, I called and talked with Chris Barber, Chief Editor. She said that she had gotten permission from my wife to run the photo. I told her she was mistaken. As it turned out, someone had called Banjo’s owners and mistakenly thought it was their photo. I thought it was only a misunderstanding and asked that she run the photo again with a credit to Seth Fox/ TheBrandywine.com. She said she would, however, I have not seen it.

The photos taken from TheBrandywine.com Web site.

The second occurance was in the Spring 2002 issue of “Discover the Delaware Valley”. On page 13, the story “What’s Old is new again” uses one of my photos of the 2001 Battle of Brandywine Reenactment event at the top of the page. The photo is credited to S. Fox/Brandywine along with another which I used with permission of the Chadds Ford Historical Society. Both are used to illustrate a story about the Brandywine Conference and Visitors Bureau (BCVB). Again, I was not asked for permission to use the photo or compensated in any way for its use. The credit is wrong and is especially annoying since a reader might think that I am a photographer working for the BCVB. Proper credit should have been given to TheBrandywine.com so readers interested in more information could have gone to that Web address and visit the best portal to the Brandywine Valley on the Web. This “mistake” would have had to been made purposely since whoever found the photo on the Web would have to have known the URL of the Web site where they found it. As a publisher I’m sure you can understand my concern over the non-compensated use of my intellectual property in clear violations of my copyright. Photos on TheBrandywine.com are credited to the photographer and carry a copyright notice along with my phone number at the bottom of each page. Getting permission would not have taken more than a few minutes at best. I would like to see your papers provide TheBrandywine.com with exposure equal to that of the story in the “Discover the Delaware Valley” which used my photo without permission and a credit to Brandywine. Your sincerely, Seth Fox Unica MultimediaPublisher of TheBrandywine.com 610.388.6841