Update November 2, 2007: After filing a registered complaint with the AMS, a series of cordial emails with the AMS Ombudsperson, a flood of comments from all sorts of concerned students and instructors and family (including an apology from AMS Communications below) a resolution has been reached.
The official response that the AMS provided for reposting here:
From what I understand, an employee of the Pit Pub who used your image to create a poster found it through Google and didn’t realise that they couldn’t use it; they have since been spoken to about the matter. This is not an excuse for what happened, but rather to let you know that the person responsible for taking the image without authorisation has been made aware of the implications of their actions. I will make sure that other AMS businesses and services are similarly aware, so that this kind of situation does not happen in the future. Please be assured that people are aware of the seriousness of what happened, and my impression is that the apologies coming from the Communications department are genuine. The AMS has expressed that it is open to exploring a monetary donation to a charity as suggested by Jeff.
Thanks,
Krista
Krista Riley
AMS Ombudsperson
AMS Student Society of UBC Vancouver
P: 604 822 4846 F: 604 822 4992
AMS: Enhancing Student Life
www.ams.ubc.ca/ombuds
An open letter to the Alma Mater Society (Student Society) at the University of British Columbia. To assist@ams.ubc.ca, marketing@ams.ubc.ca:
Hi there, I’m a student at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver. It was recently brought to my attention that the AMS has a poster advertising “Halloween at the Pit,” and that this poster is an exact copy of a poster myself and a number of classmates created for our own school’s non-profit Halloween event last year.
Is there someone I can speak directly to about this matter? Myself and the Emily Carr Institute are concerned with not only issues of copyright, but with respect for student work (we spent many hours preparing our poster, including our model who had to cover his hands in dirt and flex blood into his veins and pose for dozens of shots, or the communication designer who mocked the work up in photoshop, or the dozens of volunteers who helped us) and for using our work to advertise a fee-based ($5) event at the commercial UBC Pit Pub.
The University of British Columbia AMS Poster design, October 2007.
The Emily Carr Institute Halloween poster design, October 2006.
Attached: photos of the AMS poster in question and our original poster. Below, a link to a blog post I wrote about the work on our poster on October 16, 2006:
https://jeffwerner.ca/2006/10/halloween_desig.html
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter,
Jeff Werner
p.s. Also note I am reproducing this letter on my blog at:
https://jeffwerner.ca/2007/10/theft_is_the_sincerest_fo.html
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Department of Design
Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver, Canada
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