Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Steals Images Again.

The day starts and the Tourism Authority of Thailand Sukjai Thailand Facebook page makes its first post by copying photos from Thailand’s Kasikorn bank’s website.

Here is a screen shot of the Tourism Authority of Thailand Sukjai Thailand Facebook post:

Tourism Authority of Thailand Sukjai Facebook Post

Two of the seven photos added were stolen by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.  You can see them at the Kasikorn Bank Travel site.  They are the first two photos on the page.

I have not yet found where the other five photos came from but I am still looking.

What gets me about this thievery perpetrated by the Tourism Authority of Thailand is if you go to the Tourism Thailand web site – the official site of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, there is a copyright notice at the bottom of the page.  Granted it hasn’t been updated to include the year 2011, but TAT thinks that their work is copyrighted.  They are 100% wrong.

Any work produced by a Thai Government agency is in the public domain – meaning – anyone can use it for any purpose without permission.  The only exclusion to work on their site is anything produced by a third party – i.e, contracted or photos and text uploaded by registered users.  But, if TAT produced something original, then anyone can use it.

Maybe, there is nothing original on the site.  Perhaps all of the work, photos, videos, text, etc. are the work of third party contractors.  Perhaps all the Tourism Authority of Thailand staff is capable of is copying and stealing other people’s work.

The point is, the Tourism Authority of Thailand has a copyright notice on the bottom of all of their website pages and a lengthy “Terms of Use” document stating that no one can use their material except for personal print-outs, yet this same organization goes all over the Internet and steals text and photos.  Hypocrites!

Yesterday, there were at least three instances of thievery by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

And, the Tourism Authority of Thailand could inadvertently get people in copyright trouble.  If anyone sees a photo at any of the TAT sites, including Facebook, they would assume it is in the Public Domain since it was posted by a Thai Government Agency.  They would be wrong and the original owner could pursue legal matters in a court of law.  I am not sure if pointing the finger back to the Tourism Authority of Thailand site and stating that the photo was downloaded from a Thai government agency would hold water in court or not.

Since I am not the owner of the photos, I cannot report them for copyright violation.  All I can do is post here and attempt to contact the owners of the websites where the material was stolen.

And then pray that someone sues the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Tags: bank copyright images kasikorn stolen TAT terms of use thievery tourism authority of thailand