Left: Photographer D.K. Langford claims this Texas vehicle inspection sticker rips off his photograph. Right: The photograph on which Langford's lawsuit against the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is based. (Source)
Since "to griggs" has been proposed as a verb in (dis)honor of Judith Griggs of Cooks Source, Texas photographer David K. Langford is facing similar drama with the state of Texas. In this case the scofflaws happened to be prison inmates in a state-run program to design vehicle inspection stickers:
The suit says Langford's photo was illegally appropriated by an inmate who scanned it from a copy of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine in 1998. … Open-record requests identified the prisoner who scanned the photo as a man serving a life term for aggravated sexual assault.
As with the Monica Gaudio case, common courtesy would probably have avoided the whole mess. Interesting how some commenters in the original article share Griggs' attitude and think Langford should simply be "honored" that his work was used without payment or attribution. "If they'd called me first, I'd bet we'd have had a deal in five minutes," Langford said.
There are plenty of free images Texas could have used to avoid the whole mess. Support free culture!
