You must have seen their ads on Facebook by now. Easy Taxi claims to be the number 1 mobile taxi application and is now available in Kenya. This is all good for people who would like to use their service, but, not good to the photography community in Kenya and around the world.
To promote their application, Easy Taxi are using the ad below on Facebook. This is a screenshot captured from my phone earlier today.
The image of Nairobi used in the ad is one that I took and hold full rights to. Easy Taxi have plagiarised my photo, edited it to mask it’s ownership, used it to promote their application, and gained profit from using my intellectual property, all without my consent.
Here are some key identifiers.
Easy Taxi thought they would get away with this blatant theft, copyright infringement and disregard for the law. Well, not so fast Easy Taxi.
We have a copyright law in Kenya and it protects intellectual property owners like photographers very well. You can read it here. After you’re done, sit back and relax.
My mighty warring angels are coming after you – and not by taxi.
—————————— UPDATE ——————————
Easy Taxi management got in touch with me on phone, email and Twitter as soon as this post went up.
They apologised for the oversight on their part and admitted they were on the wrong.
We will be meeting later this week to resolve the matter.
—————————— SECOND UPDATE ——————————
After several attempts to have an out of court settlement, it seems this won’t happen. My legal team will be proceeding to court on the matter.
—————————— THIRD UPDATE ——————————
Happy to report that on 19th August 2015, Easy Taxi and I finally reached an out of court settlement.
Whoooah…
“My mighty warring angels are coming
after you – and not by taxi.” boom…
These photo thugs need to learn a lesson….
This is sad.They should be taught a good lesson.
This is very unfortunate. Very. There goes the credibility they’ve undoubtedly worked hard to build; there it goes down the gutter, never to be retrieved again.
Your kidding me Mwarv.. in this day and age??
They should at least apologize or give you credit for the photo they took.
Nothing is right about stealing photos from other people, specially if the one stealing the work is making money out of it
This is one’s fault.. The company is not an individual.. you should have contacted them first instead of screaming it all over.
That’s true. Have you tried to contact them and ask them to put it down before you scream and holler and make all sorts of noise on your blog? this is not one person with a personal vendetta against you, Calm down. Get things right quietly and if they are not responsive or deny it, name and shame. You are a professional and yes, ONE person in this company did the wrong thing. Let that be dealt with. Behave like the professional you are.
Sorry about that.It is really unfortunate how people think it is okay to steal photograhps yet they could have easily looked for the owner and contactd them. I hope you;re able to resolve the matter.
Hello all! My name is Peng and I’m the managing director for Easy Taxi Kenya.
First off, we sincerely apologize to Mwangi and to the artist community at large for this mishap. This was an oversight from some of our designers and we absolutely own up to our mistake. This should not have happened and we are putting together processes to ensure this won’t happen again.
As Easy Taxi, we’ve worked closely with many of Nairobi’s photographers, artists, and writers in the past in a professional and mutually beneficial way and we hope to continue on partnerships in the future. Of course, this can only happen if we are upfront + honest + respectful of all parties involved.
Thanks to everybody who brought this to our attention. We’ve already reached out to Mwangi and are resolving this. He’s taken some pretty amazing shots of Nairobi so I hope we’ll be collaborating in the future (properly this time).
Warm regards,
Peng
Why not just confront Easy Taxi instead of making noise all over social media and telling guys to share your post on their wall?? You Just giving them publiiy anyway, and that’s what they want!
U could have contacted them instead of going all round screaming *this my picture* trust me people who really need good photographer will not consider you,this is all about public attention you are seeking bro.
Whoa! Did you try and confront them? Ask them to give attribution? If you did then this post is warranted. If you didn’t this an overreaction on your part. But ending was a bit funny.
He want’s his peace of cake. A little side money. When u google Nairobi, u get first that picture. If he wanted to copyright it he should put a watermark or at least something on picture to protect it.
It’s just a photo man. The taxi owner guy has apologized up there so chill out. Besides, it’s not like they’re a crew of photographers entering it into a competition as their own. They are a taxi company using it to show how Nairobi looks like. Why else did you take the photo of its not to be used as a depiction of Nairobi?