Intellectual Property Theft - Getty Images John Barrettt

I have some good news in these trying times. I managed to come to an amicable agreement out of court arrangement with a subsidiary company of Getty Images. They have taken all my images off their sites and no longer profit from my intellectual property. Financially there was no great return for me but it was a moral boost to stop huge monopolies profiteering from this illegal and insidious practice.

I would like to send a big thank you to all those people supported my campaign when I first mentioned it here on Soul Source. I am personally grateful to Oscar Romp and friends that supported my struggle by writing directly to Getty Images insisting that they stop the illegal methods of using my photographs without permission.

My original photographic files were stolen in 2004 from a computer in a photographic gallery exhibition by Jon Swinstead, owner of the PYMCA gallery in London, see: https://subcultz.com/2018/07/30/pymc-british-subculture-fashion/

Swinstead also runs a new photographic archive entitled 'Youth Club' and so for all those soulies that are photographing the scene please be careful to protect your work at all costs and be mindful that big business will seek to profit from your hard work often without payment.

In order to protect the UK soul scene from exploitation and commercialisation we have to be mindful of individuals like Swinstead and companies like Getty etc that have no moral basis to their endeavors and seek only short term greed and profit. This has to stop and I would please urge everybody on the soul scene to report any breaking of international copy right laws to a legal specialist in intellectual property theft.