The Chicago Tribune had to act quickly this week after realizing one of the images it had posted and labeled user-generated content (UGC) was actually an image under copyright. The picture was posted under the heading Awkward Tombstones in a special section the paper and its affiliates are running showcasing UGC.

The image shows a very distraught child in front of a headstone that reads Santa Claus 1836-2000. The news outlet uses images from Flikr as opposed to accepting reader’s submissions as many other newspapers do. This method obviously does not involve verifying authenticity and put the Chicago Tribune in a very undesirable position.

Whether or not you believe the doctoring of this image is obvious or not it is undeniable that UGC and
copyright is something companies need to take seriously.

Companies that are interested in using UGC can easily avoid this pitfall by always confirming the source of
the image or other UGC. This issue boils down to the paper not performing its due diligence in researching
the source of the photograph.

The paper never felt it was in the wrong as almost all images on Flickr are under a creative commons license. The person who posted the image had pulled it from a chain letter he or she had received years ago. The Tribune would have known this had they contacted the Flickr account owner who posted the image, which is something you’d expect from a news outlet that deals with copyright issues everyday.