Family Sues Virgin Mobile Over Use Of Teen's Photo In Advertisement

Thursday, September 20th 2007, 7:14 pm

By: News On 6

DALLAS (AP) _ A Dallas family has sued Australia's Virgin Mobile phone company, claiming it caused their teenage daughter grief and humiliation by plastering her photo on billboards and Web site advertisements without consent.

The family of Alison Chang says Virgin Mobile grabbed the picture from Flickr, Yahoo Inc.'s popular photo-sharing Web site, and failed to credit by name the photographer who took the photo.

Chang's photo was part of a Virgin Mobile Australia campaign called ``Are You With Us Or What?'' It features pictures downloaded from Flickr superimposed with the company's ad slogans.

The picture of 16-year-old Chang flashing a peace sign was taken an April church car wash by Alison's youth counselor, who posted it that day on his Flickr page, according to Alison's brother, Damon. In the ad, Virgin Mobile printed one of its campaign slogans, ``Dump your pen friend,'' over Alison's picture.

The ad also says ``Free text virgin to virgin'' at the bottom.

The experience damaged Alison's reputation and exposed her to ridicule from her peers and scrutiny from people who can now Google her, the family charged in the lawsuit.

``It's the tag line; it's derogatory,'' said Damon Chang, 27. ``A lot of her church friends saw it.''

The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in state district court in Dallas, names Virgin Mobile USA LLC, its Australian counterpart, and Creative Commons Corp., a Massachusetts nonprofit that licenses sharing of Flickr photos, as defendants.

The family accused the companies of libel and invasion of Chang's privacy. The suit seeks unspecified damages for Chang and the photographer, Justin Ho-Wee Wong.

A spokeswoman for Virgin Mobile USA said the company had nothing to do with the ads and had asked to be removed from the lawsuit. Virgin Mobile Pty Ltd., the Australian company, did not immediately return messages Thursday.

People who post photos on Flickr are asked how they want to license their attribution. The youth counselor chose a sharing license from Creative Commons that allows others to reuse work such as photos without violating copyright laws, if they credit the photographer and say where the photo was taken. His Flickr page appears at the bottom of the ad.

Flickr was a Canadian company that developed the photo-sharing Web site then sold it to Yahoo in 2005.