A Family Christmas Card

     While this situation is super strange and almost imaginable, I gave a few chuckles to the situation. My initial reaction from reading the article is that the grocery store owner just thought he could get away with it. I don't think he was really too concerned with copyright laws or if that was a real family even. It seems kind of strange to me that the picture, as mentioned in the article was just posted to a blog website. I am not really sure how someone stumbles across and blog post and then mistakes it for a computer generated image. Regardless, no one was harmed in the situation and the store owner did seem genuine. I also laughed at the fact that if they were locals, he would have bought them wine to make up for the incident.
     Technically since there was no watermark on the picture, there is not much copyright violation happening. Sure someone has the rights to that picture, but with something uploaded to the internet, like a picture without a watermark, what is saying permission to use must be granted by the owner? People use pictures found on the internet for personal use all of the time. If the picture would have been watermarked from the beginning, that is a different story.
     In an educational setting, I think it just adds to the message to give credit where credit is due. If a student uses a picture from the internet, they need to be aware of what pictures are ok to use and what are not. Teaching students the meaning of watermarks on pictures and a short copyright lesson to follow would not be a bad idea. Even with this in mind, students should understand the importance of siting sources and providing links to where images are found. This will eliminate the surprise of placing someone else's face in a grocery store in Prague.