Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. If you think it is, seek help immediately.
Various reports on the web say Virgin Mobile has used images from flickr in their advertising campaing in Australia, and now people are outraged.
Here’s an idea: If you don’t want your images being used commercially, use a non-commercial license.
And another (they’re free today): If you don’t have a model release for a photo, don’t license it. Period.
Luckily, some commenters do get the idea. Yay, voice of reason!
How common is it for large corporations to steal amateur photos like that?
See, Virgin aren’t stealing (and that’s leaving aside the distinction of physical and virtual property). They are very likely completely in the right! The photographer released the picture under the CC-BY (Creative Commons-Attribution) license, which makes it okay to use for any commercial endeavour. That comes with at least a moral implication that you have actually gotten the necessary release forms, too, since otherwise the whole license is pointless.
I just can’t believe they would USE it like that!
Well, that’s the idea behind the CC licenses, that you can just use CC-licensed things by following the terms of the license. And that’s why you use any of the CC-NC (Non-Commercial) versions if you do not want to allow commercial usage. Seems simple, right?
And if you don’t have all the rights to the work… then you don’t license it at all.