How do you go about demanding payment from a local newspaper if you discover that they’ve infringed upon your copyright? Blogger Duane Lester of All American Blogger recently found an article of his reprinted nearly verbatim, typos and all, by the Oregon Times Observer in Oregon, Missouri. He then decided to pay a visit to the newspapers offices with a letter in hand to demand payment from the editor face to face. The video above shows how the confrontation unfolded.
Sigma made a bold move with its SD1 DSLR camera last month, slashing $6,400 off the camera’s list price to drop it from $9,700 to $3,300. The “street” price — how much the camera is actually priced in stores — fell from $6,900 to $2,300. If you thought customers who had purchased at the high price had been betrayed, think again: Sigma is rewarding those customers handsomely for their loyalty. Early adopters will receive 40 reward points through the “SD1 Point Support Program” that can be redeemed for ¥400,000 in Sigma gear — that’s $4,800 in new gear for a $4,600 price drop! This only applies to customers who purchased the SD1 at full price before February 23rd, and you’ll need to contact Sigma directly to claim your rewards.
After discovering his photograph used without permission on The Telegraph’s website, photographer Jonathan Kent contacted the newspaper asking to be compensated for the unauthorized use. He then received an email from deputy picture editor Matthew Fearn, who defended the newspaper’s actions, stating,
[Due to the] ever-shifting nature of news – in particular with the advent of online publishing – [...] it is not always possible to secure copyright clearance before pictures are published.
Our industry therefore adopts the stance that if a picture has no overwhelming artistic value and if there is no issue of exclusivity (ie it is already being published online or elsewhere) then no reasonable copyright owner will object to its being republished in exchange for a reasonable licence fee. The only alternative to such a stance is not to publish pictures at all unless they come from a commercial library, the available range of which will inevitably be inadequate.
[...] In this instance, and in light of what you have told us, we have no reason to doubt that you are the copyright owner for this picture. However the blog from which it was taken gave no indication as to the copyright owner and no contact details. We therefore used it (in fact we inadvertently used it again for some four hours this morning) in the normal way, which is to say that we were always prepared to pay the industry standard rate.
Fearn has reportedly offered Kent £400 to settle the case, arguing that it is a higher amount than Kent would be awarded by the court.
