SWINDON Council has been forced to seek legal advice over Facebook images.

A number of archive copyrighted images have been uploaded to the Facebook page Swindon Images without permission, according to the council.

The pictures of the town have come from the central library’s Flickr site. The council has said that despite contacting the page owner and Facebook directly, many of the photos remained.

The page owner said he was not aware of any copyright issues over the images and that several images had since been deleted by Facebook.

The library’s online photo gallery on Flickr contains about 7,000 images taken from its photo archive.

A council spokesman said many of the photos appeared with the permission of the copyright holders, an agreement which did not include onward publication by third parties on other social networking sites.

He said: “We have made a number of polite and friendly attempts to communicate with the person who is posting copyright images onto their Facebook page, but our messages were deleted, and those who posted them were blocked.

“We have been left with no option but to seek legal advice, and we will be seeing what help Facebook can give us in preventing this from continuing, as it is in clear breach of their user guidelines.

“Our online gallery at Flickr has been hugely popular, but all the images we put there are with the express permission of the copyright holders and this does not include onward publication by third parties on other social networking sites.

“We have a duty to protect the legal rights of the local historians, experts, enthusiasts and specialists who have supported our project.”

Since the page owner posted a message on the site informing visitors that a number of images had been deleted, users have posted messages of support and assistance to help avoid any copyright problems.

The page owner has described the page as a group for ‘people of Swindon to enjoy pictures that I take of the town on a regular basis. Showing old buildings, new buildings, places of interest, panoramic pictures and even some pictures from years gone by which I will be adding. Hope you all enjoy and feel free to add your own pics too.’ In Facebook’s terms and conditions, it states that users “will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law”.