I recently came upon an ad on our local newspapers website that I noticed had my photo in it; however I never received question about permission to use this photo. The photo is a background image for our local ReMax office. The photo is of a local pier taken at night. The photo is clearly mine I can match details such as composition, the clouds, down to the people blur walking on the pier. Now the question is, is this something I should pursue by giving the office a call? I am assuming they got the image from my flickr site where I post low res photos for friends and family to view.
There are some time based provisions as to what you can seek in the way of penalties so the first thing to do is register the copyright at the Library of Congress. That could improve the situation when it comes to possible legal penalties depending on when you register and when they started the infringing use. Register before contacting them. You also should take screen captures of the infringing uses.
