An Artist Used Screenshots From a Video Feed to Document Italy’s Deserted Streets. Now the Webcam Company Responsible Is Demanding Payment

When the world went on lockdown, Milan Radisic, an aerial
photographer who has shot in 250 locations across Europe, found
himself at home in Hungary, trapped indoors like many other people
around the world.

To keep himself occupied, he undertook a project publishing
images of once-bustling Italian tourist destinations such as St.
Mark’s Square in Venice, now eerily devoid of people.

Because he could not travel, he took his pictures from publicly
accessible webcam feeds maintained by SkylineWebcams. After
converting them to grayscale, he posted the pictures on
his Behance profile and on
Bored Panda.

That’s when SkylineWebcams came knocking, accusing Radisic
of using their pictures without authorization.

“Please proceed in removing the content as soon as possible,” a
company representative wrote to Radisic in an email obtained by
Artnet News. The other option was to license the images for
€2,100.

“I was shocked,” Radisic recalled. He says he already paid to
access the images by signing up for the company’s premium
service for €2.95 ($3.20) a month.

“At that moment, it was so important to share with the world
what happened in Italy,” he added. Stressing that he wasn’t making
any money from the project, he asked the representative to approve
his use of the images for free.

But the representative denied the request, and
warned Radisic that unless the photos were removed, “you will
most likely be contacted by our legal department.” When Radisic
subsequently offered €200 ($215), he was again
rebuffed. “I am sympathetic, unfortunately there isn’t much
that I can do,” the company representative wrote. “I’m tied by
company policy.”

Representatives from SkylineWebcams did not respond to
Artnet News’s request for comment.

Radisic took the photos down at first, but he has since made
them available again. Now he’s planning on turning all 40 into a
giant collage to be auctioned off to benefit a hospital in Bergamo,
the city at the center of Italy’s outbreak

“To be honest, from the business side, this series was a huge
promotion for the webcam provider,” he told Artnet News, joking
that “they might even have to pay for the collaboration.”

See more images from Radisic’s series below.

The post An Artist Used Screenshots From a Video Feed to
Document Italy’s Deserted Streets. Now the Webcam Company
Responsible Is Demanding Payment appeared first on artnet
News.