Update: Ola seems to have made amends on the load screen image of their application and has provided attribution to Praveen P.N’s Flickr account. The credits appear on the application’s About Us page and here’s a screen shot. All’s fair then.
Earlier: It is probably one of the most recognizable images in the country right now with users in over 85 cities looking at it when they open the Ola mobile app. And they might have made a rookie mistake of stealing the image. According to Praveen, a Yahoo employee in California, Ola used the photo from his Flickr account without his permission.
WTF! @Olacabs is using my photo for their iPhone app *without* my permission. Original: https://t.co/u9S0nVXyn8pic.twitter.com/k3ieGYGsUg
— Praveen (@holydevil) March 17, 2015
According to the Praveen’s Flickr account, the image was taken on July 6, 2012 at Bytatraranapura, Bangalore and is under the Creative Commons licence which allows the image to be used only for non-commercial purposes and needs to carry attribution.
Ola seems to have reached out to him through some “guy” in September 2014 about using the image but did not hear from the company after he named his price.
One guy got in touch with me for this pic (for their App) in Sept 2014. Never hear back after I told him the price. pic.twitter.com/cgh0fFt3D2
— Praveen (@holydevil) March 17, 2015
Naturally, this caused a lot of outrage on Twitter because it’s not f*&%ing cool to steal. Ola seems to have reached out to Praveen again and patched things up.
So @Olacabs have promised to make it right and are working on it.
— Praveen (@holydevil) March 18, 2015
But negative points to Ola for using a meme incorrectly.
Praveen @holydevil , now that everything is sorted, what say? pic.twitter.com/oaBVvd5hhF
— Ola (@Olacabs) March 18, 2015
MediaNama has reached out to Praveen to know how the issue was “sorted”. We’ve also gotten in touch with Ola about the image and will update when we hear back.
Smooth criminals
Ola isn’t the only or the first one to use designs or images for commercial use without permission. Most recently, Housing.com launched an advertising campaign which was apparently “inspired” by Vidit Bhargava, the creator of the LookUp dictionary for iOS.
And who can forget Apple, which had to pay $21 million to the Swiss National Railway operator to continue to use the iconic clock design in iOS. Will Ola need another round of funding for design purposes?
