There is a referendum coming up back home in Ireland to do with abolishing the Seanad which is the Irish Senate. Unfortunately over the years it has become a bit of a toothless tiger filled with retiring Dail politicians, wanna-be Dail politicians or government appointees who tow the government line on every issue rendering the upper chamber a useless rubber stamp for the lower chamber. The government now wants to abolish it instead of reforming it. While it cant continue to exist in it’s current form it would be a shame to see Ireland left without one of the important democratic checks and balances.

This is an old photo from my library that I took some years ago during a photo tour of Leinster House and the Houses of the Oireachtas. We got the opportunity to go into the Chambers and take some photos like this while they were empty. It was posted to my Flicker page at that time as an All Rights Reserved photo. With the Seanad now the center of political attention in Ireland one organisation contacted me and requested permission to use it and several other photos I had taken, which I gave them. Last night I  was curious so I decided to do a quick Google image search and discovered some people have already used it without my permission. Two media companies, a group Facebook page, a PR company, a blogger and a couple of Seanad candidates.

I’m naturally pissed. My stance on my photos is simple, ask don’t steal. Sometimes when my photos are used I get paid, especially for commercial use. Sometimes after chatting with the person who wants to use a photo I will allow them to use it for free so long at they give me suitable credit. This did not happen in this case. I can understand amateurs grabbing pictures and making a mistake but media and PR professionals do know better, after all if someone stole their work they would drag them to court.  So now I’ve had to send out emails and will probably have to follow them up with invoices and get into all that hassle.