iPhone Developer Too Cheap to Buy Icons [UPDATED]
It may be the season of good-will, but one naughty iPhone-developer has decided to play the role of Scrooge in the iTunes App Store.
Movies, created by French developer, Olivier Bernal, went live at the App Store on December 19. The app, retailing at $2.99, allows users to grab essential information on the latest box-office releases.
The icon for Movies clearly features a watermark from iStockphoto, a royalty free image library, implying that rather than purchase the master image, Bernal has pilfered the preview sample.
This particular iStockphoto license (including the ‘Electronic Items for Resale’ addendum) is available for 115 credits. At 95 cents per iStockphoto credit, this would be a one-off cost of $109.25. Bernal would therefore need to generate only 37 sales of Movies to cover the cost of the image license.
Achieving just 37 sales is hardly a difficult objective when you also consider that, in order to maximize the potential customer-base for his app, Bernal has created several iterations using the same icon, including Cinema and Cinema UK.
It seems that this may not be the first time Bernal has pilfered from iStockphoto. There are two more highly suspect app icons – TV Shows and Week Number of the Year. The TV Shows icon features a white diagonal line, quite possibly from an iStock Photo watermark. The latter of the pair, clearly uses an iStock Photo sample, titled Calendar – icon idea.
It’s not as immediately obvious as our prime suspect, but enlarging the app icon and then comparing it to the iStockphoto sample image, the original watermark is easily visible.
Sites such as iStockphoto provide a valuable service to organizations with limited design resources, allowing independent creatives to distribute royalty-free visual assets at reasonable rates. It’s therefore somewhat disappointing to see independent developers effectively stealing — surely they should understand the value of content generated by fellow independents?
Furthermore, setting aside development time and cost, distributing via the App Store is hardly prohibitive in terms of initial outlay: Apple charges a one-off fee to developers of $99. It seems that either saving a few bucks or just downright laziness on Bernal’s part led him to grab the sample imagery from iStockphoto.
The question is, now that Bernal has been called out on his immoral icon antics, what will his next move be? It’ll be most interesting to see how he handles the designers whose creations he has illicitly profited from; ideally, after a hasty apology, Bernal will be compensating them for their contribution to his App Store products.
Note that we’ve tried to reach Bernal for comment on the story but have yet to hear back. We assume he was too busy shoveling a mountain of coal from his stocking, stealing bonbons from children and kicking puppies.
UPDATE: We heard back from Mr. Bernal:
For [your] information, I bought the right to use the pictures this morning. You were right, at the beginning I first started with nothing and can’t afford to pay for the pictures, it’s perfectly normal to pay if I intend to continue to use it.
He says the updated, non-watermarked icons will be implemented with the next updates to the applications sometime in January.
Devon B. on December 29th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I can sypathize… One of my photos was stolen off of Flickr for the Trail Guru iphone app icon. I’m not sure yet how to approach the developer about it. I’m fine with him using the photo but would like to be credited for the shot at the very minimum since it’s a free app.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abraysive/98422845/
Jeff on December 29th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
@Devon B.: You should absolutely pursue this (you could report this to Apple for example). It is absolutely not OK to use someone else’s images/photos/artwork/software without consent. While these guys may give away the app for free, they most certainly are trying to squeeze money out of it through their web site and ads in the application. And it actually doesn’t matter at all whether or not they’re giving it away. They’re infringing your copyright and you shouldn’t let them get away with it.
J.
Brandon Eley on December 29th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Have you notified iStockPhoto of the infringement? Stock photo companies are very strict when it comes to copyright abuse… I’d expect him to receive legal notices immediately demanding payment (and likely more than the “face value.”)
Apple would probably also remove the app from the AppStore if a DMCA complaint was filed with them.
Ep on December 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
This dood just got got on the internet.
iconman on December 29th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
one can buy icons for less than 99 usd. some of the icon designers are happy if someone asks them to design some artwork. on the other hand it might be an ‘advertising deal’. right now trillions of mac and iphone users read this post and now know for sure that istockphoto really exists…
Devon B. on December 29th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
So then it would be fair of me to ask the Trail Guru developer for $100 USD for a one-time non-exclusive license agreement for the usage of my photo to represent his software?
Dallas on December 29th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
He wouldn’t even need to buy the extended license. If you read their site it says the extended electronic resale license if you are going to resell the image as part of say a template for e-cards or website templates, etc. If he is taking the image and then using it to build an icon he would only need to purchase the image which he could get for like $14. This is just pathetic. If he can’t/won’t pay for the image how can he expect people to pay for his app? Not to mention if he is willing to let that go out with the watermark then you can only guess how crappy the app will be.
Jeremy on December 29th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
looks like he’s changed the icon on the site (unless it was always different) after the backlash, but still hasn’t changed the “Week Number of the Year” app
HerbertKornfeld on December 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
When Loan Lite was first introduced into the App Store, it had a Pixelmator watermarked image for its screenshot. It’s since been fixed, but I thought it was funny enough to capture. Nothing infringing here, but still amusing. You can see it at http://bit.ly/15ZDq.
rickw on December 29th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
This is just pathetic. Why do these developers, who are probably new to Mac programming, suddenly think that they can STEAL images and that nobody would notice? It’s the sheer size of the iPhone audience that has them busted. How ridiculous and stupid to steal like that. And to think, they couldn’t even take the time to remove the watermark from the image? Talk about Gold Rush.
Brian on December 29th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
The iStockphoto license is only 15 credits – not 115. So that image would have cost the developer less than $15.
boba on December 29th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
devon, $100 is actually quite low for what you’re offering him. i suggest that you try find someone with access to fotoquote (http://www.cradocfotosoftware.com/) to give you an appropriate cost for the type of license you’re offering.
personally i would send him an invoice for what you deem appropriate ESPECIALLY since your photo on flickr has an ‘all rights reserved’ clearly stated.
this sort of thing happens quite alot in my field (concert photography) and it never ceases to disgust me. good luck to you!
Chris on December 30th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Nice work exposing this. Theft of intellectual property is obviously a very big problem online. Especially for us photographers as it is difficult to show your work without enabling full use, and in the end you just have to trust that people act with integrity. That a software maker can’t understand the value in respecting the intellectual property rights of others is baffling though.
For Devon B: I would urge you to contact the user of your photo and let them know that they are infringing your rights (and you are not happy about it), and if you are willing, suggest that this can be settled. Stealing the work of others is not ok (whether it is subsequently given away for free or not).
Christophe on December 30th, 2008 at 3:02 am
$100 is obviously not a big deal, even for an independant developer planning to distribute paid apps. But this case won’t show the best of us french developers…
oWorld on December 30th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
This is the uncensored version of my answer to the article wrote by Olly Farshi.
————
Hello,
As a good journalist, I would have appreciated that you give me the time to answer to your email before publishing your article.
I’m a french developer, so we’re in different time zone. I received your email at 11pm and was sleeping back then.
It’s now about 10am, I just read your email and your article.
For information, I bought the right to use the pictures this morning. You were right, at the beginning I first started with nothing and can’t afford to pay for the pictures, it’s perfectly normal to pay if I intend to continue to use it.
The pictures will be updated with the next updates of the application (In January). Your article start with a good intention but turn wrong very fast. I’m not a sick bastard ready to steal from children … To develop an application is not as easy as you seem, nor even as profitable as you seem to tell it. For information, the pictures cost 127 EUROS ($180) and not $109.
“Apple charges a one-off fee to developers of $99.”
Wrong, apple charges 20% on the price of each sell and $99 which is the subscription price.
I don’t want my name to be used in your article and ask you to remove it immediately. You can use “OWORLD” which is the name of my company.
It seems right to publish my answer in your post and to modify your article.
————–
You can already see that the icon of Week Number, TV Show and Movies was replaced on the appStore. The other icons are on there way.
Tim Windsor on December 30th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Amazing. What’s that saying about “Give ‘em enough rope…”?
Sorry, Bernal, but you don’t get to use a stock image until you have enough money sitting around to pay for it (or decide you’d better pay now that the pesky American blog has noticed). That’s why it’s called a license fee. Whether you paid for the image “this morning” is of no relevance to the infringement. You were using the image without paying for it. Under any definition of copyright, that translates thus: stealing.
Raven on December 31st, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I was shocked enough that the dev thought that he could do it in the first place – but that comment from him made him seem much worse.
The fact that he’s upset that he was exposed as a thief is ludicrous. (Yes, theft. Those images are watermarked to prevent people like that dev from doing exactly what he did and stealing their images.) It doesn’t matter that it was expensive; if he thought it was good enough to use, he ought to have thought it was good enough to pay for from the moment he first started to use it.
That said, Olly, your last sentence was entirely overkill and inappropriate. He’s wrong, but so are you.
Staff Comment Josh Pigford, TheAppleBlog on December 31st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
@Raven: Olly’s last sentence was said with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The internets needs some sort of sarcasm indicator. :)
DrillerKiller on January 1st, 2009 at 9:21 am
Copyright Infringement is not theft. It’s piracy. http://bitsandpieces.us/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/imagespiracy-20not-20theft.jpg
iPhone Application Developer on January 30th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
What happens when you run a company and one of your employees steals your design work, and uses it to create his own app?
Sam
iPhone Application Developer