copyright

In the age of digital photography, many of us turn to online cloud solutions to help us backup our precious moments. However, the question that many of us want to know is what permissions a perspective service has with our content. With a form of hysteria sweeping the Web, we have decided to take a look at the industry’s top storage solutions and what their terms of service say about the files you upload. By using any of these solutions, you are automatically accepting their terms.

Imagine assembling a portfolio of over 4,000 photographs and then being forced to make it disappear or face life-altering consequences; that's the situation sophomore Anthony Mazur is currently facing at Flower Mound High School in his Texas hometown. After discovering the love of sports photography, the Lewisville Independent School District is now claiming that Anthony’s photographs are theirs and that he has no right to use them.

Artist Richard Prince is notorious in the art world for taking other people's work, "appropriating" them as his own with various changes, and then selling them for large amounts of dough. His latest endeavor is once again raising eyebrows: Prince is selling other people's Instagram photos for up to $100,000 each.

It seems that the viral content blog EliteDaily hasn't learned its lesson despite the current copyright infringement lawsuit being brought by photojournalist Peter Menzel. Another photo has been misused for a viral article, and photographers aren't happy with how the writer is responding.

Instagram updated its community guidelines today in order to give users a clearer picture of where the service stands on the issues of copyright and nudity. Policies themselves haven't changed, Instagram says, but the rules have been fleshed out and clarified in response to user questions and various incidents.

In August I hired ImageRights International, a reputable copyright enforcement agency, to assume the routine handling of commercial infringements of my professional work. There are a lot. Starting in September 2014, companies began receiving letters from ImageRights’ partner law firms seeking to resolve these infringements on my behalf.

In an age in which pageviews are supreme, blogs and other online publications often ignore copyright laws, publishing viral photographs without permission in order to attract clicks and eyeballs. While much of the time this type of behavior flies under the radar, sometimes the unethical behavior comes back to bite the publishers hard when photographers do notice and take action.

Here's one of the latest examples: photojournalist Peter Menzel has filed a lawsuit against the blog EliteDaily for sharing his photos in a viral post without permission.

An apartment complex near Orlando, Florida, is receiving a torrent of bad publicity after one of its tenant contracts was published online. The document forces tenants to agree to a $10,000 fine if they post a bad review of the complex online, and it claims copyright to all photographs taken by tenants in the complex.

A US court has ruled in favor of Bob Marley's family in a lawsuit they filed to get photos of the late reggae musician off unauthorized merchandise. The ruling will impact how iconic portraits of Marley are used for commercial purposes by third parties.

Here's one of the stranger copyright controversies we've come across. It all started with a photo contest and an accusation of copyright infringement.

A photographer has filed a copyright lawsuit against Nike, accusing the global athletic brand of ripping off his photograph of Michael Jordan to create its iconic "Jumpman" logo for Air Jordan merchandise.

Renowned Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has been found guilty in a plagiarism case after basing one of his paintings on a photo by photojournalist Katrijn Van Giel. Tuymans has been ordered to cease exhibiting and reproducing his painting, and will be fined €500,000 (~$580,000) if he does not comply.

The year was 2008. I was still a novice with a camera, and the basics of photography were still very unfamiliar to me. I knew what my eyes liked, even if I didn't understand how to get the camera to capture it. On March 1 of 2008, I snapped a photo looking north on 5th Avenue in New York City.

At the time, I didn't have a Tumblr page to share my photos, and I didn't have Flickr, either. The only place my photos lived was on my computer's hard drive, and occasionally it would show up in a Facebook post to my friends. There was one other place, though.

“If you don’t want your photos stolen, don’t post them on the Internet.”

This is an argument I have heard over and over again, mostly from people who have never had their work borrowed. Which of course is like saying, “I know you were home, but if you didn’t want your belongings stolen, you shouldn’t have left your door unlocked.”

Earlier this month, National Geographic photographer Tomas van Houtryve had one of his photographs selected by TIME magazine as one of the Top 10 Photos of 2014. It was a high honor, but also one that opened an unexpected Pandora's Box for Van Houtryve: his photos began appearing on third-party products on Amazon without his permission.

And that's not all: Van Houtryve says Amazon isn't responding to his requests to have the products completely taken down.

Want to learn the basics of US copyright law without having to spend eons going through imageless websites and backbreaking textbooks? Check out Bound by Law. It's a comic book that translates abstract and confusing copyright laws into easy to understand "visual metaphors."

By the time you're through with the 72-page comic, you'll know quite a bit about the basics of copyright law, including fair use, infringement, and public domain.

Editor’s note: This video contains strong language that is not suitable for some environments. In 2007, famed science fiction …

According to an oft-forgotten clause in EU copyright laws, it is illegal to publish nighttime photos of certain public buildings in certain countries without asking permission from the owners of the buildings.

So why isn’t everyone who captures and posts images of iconic building such as France’s Eiffel Tower prosecuted then? Because the clause and accompanying law are rather vague, only accepted by certain states, and all-round confusing to interpret.

The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill is under fire after photographer Justin Cook found out that they not only used a photo of his without permission, but also denied that they could have possibly known such image was not free to use.

Local Alaska photographer Mark Osborne found a nasty surprise waiting for him in the mail a few days ago. Among the bills and junk mail was sitting a political attack ad aimed at a friend of his running for the State of Alaska House of Representatives, and illustrating the ad was an screen grab from a video taken by Mark himself.

Osborne was, understandably, a little annoyed. And so he shot the response above to explain the situation, express his displeasure, and laugh at the situation a bit while he was at it.

Understanding your legal rights as a photographer can often be confusing and overwhelming. From copyright infringement to fair use to DMCA, there are a number of legal concepts that every photographer should be familiar with. Here are eight important legal cases that are illustrative of these concepts and the importance of registering your copyright.

What would you do if you found your photograph misused, not by a celebrity or a company, but by the head of government of a country? That's the question facing Cambridge, Massachusetts-based photographer Bimal Nepal.

Nepal, a photojournalist whose work has appeared in National Geographic, recently found his photograph shared without permission by the prime minister of India.

Update: The company has responded to our request for comment and fixed the issue. See full update at the bottom.

Dick Smith is a leading tech retailer in both New Zealand and Australia, but as an anonymous reader showed us this morning, they might have goofed up in a big way in a recent ad they posted on their Dick Smith NZ Facebook page.

As you can see from the screenshot above, they seem to have 'appropriated' an iStock image as the background... without even taking the time to remove the watermark.

While browsing through my image search results on PIXSY (a new service that finds and invoices image theft for you), I was surprised to see my picture for sale on Etsy (above). My immediate reaction:

What an ugly mousepad. I’d never print my photo like this.
The seller seems to be stealing thousands of photos. How could Etsy let this happen?
Who had the nerve to think they could do this?

So my picture was the party and I wasn’t invited. I decided to see what I could do to notify the seller and contact Etsy about the problem.

A recently-released product by Microsoft that allows content creators to embed digital images on their websites is being called a “massive infringement” of copyright images in a lawsuit filed by Getty Images against the computer giant.

First it was Ludacris, who decided to convey the impression that he was on a beach by stealing and posting a photographer's beautiful sunset photo on his Instagram account. Now, it seems famed rapper Shawn "Diddy” Combs is following in his copyright infringement footsteps.

One of Denmark’s most photographed attractions, a Little Mermaid statue, comes with a strange caveat: it can’t be photographed. Or rather, a photograph of it can't be used in a publication of any sort, even for journalistic purposes, without a big fat invoice finding its way to your door.

David Slater, the photographer who is currently embroiled in an argument (and quite possibly, soon to be embroiled in a lawsuit) with Wikimedia over the famous 'monkey selfie' images, recently spoke to ITN to clarify his position on the whole 'who owns the copyright' argument.

The controversy surrounding the monkey selfies above, which were taken by an endangered crested black macaque using photographer David Slater's equipment, is heating up once again as Wikipedia parent Wikimedia refuses to remove the photo from its commons library, claiming that Slater does not own the copyright.

This post is something I’ve struggled with for months, and debated even writing. But it’s time to share my story, and explain why I’ve been absent.

When people are browsing around online for photographs to use, be them for an article, a project or something else, it’s vital to know whether or not they’re allowed to use the image. Even if they’re allowed to use the image, it’s important to know what all can be done with it.

Here to help those with any image in question is this handy little infographic, created by Curtis Newbold, The Visual Communications Guy.

Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

This hour and fifteen minute-long presentation is one of the most detailed and useful videos on copyright law for photographers that we've run across. Put together by B&H in New York, they asked the The Copyright Zone guys, photographer Jack Reznicki and lawyer Ed Greenberg, to tell viewers and attendees "everything you wanted to know about copyright but were afraid to ask."

We're big fans of anybody who helps to stop gear theft, and so naturally, we've always been big fans of the free service Lenstag. Initially unproven, the service made its first recovery a couple of months ago, and as its database of registered gear expands, it can only get better.

But Lenstag isn't just resting on its laurels and waiting for that moment to come, content with what it has achieved. No, the service is branching out with an awesome new feature that will help you keep track of unauthorized use of your images as well!

In a copyright battle truly worthy of the David and Goliath designation, it seems that Walmart and its founding family, the Waltons, have filed a lawsuit against the widow of a photographer who ran a small Arkansas studio called Bob's Studio of Photography.

Back in 2012, the Republican Study Committee caused widespread debate over intellectual property law after publishing and then pulling a paper on copyright reform. Derek Khanna, the conservative staffer behind the paper, was fired by the committee shortly afterward.

He may have lost the platform afforded by the RSC, but Khanna is still pushing to have his views on copyright reform heard. His latest writings continue to cause quite a discussion on how copyright should be handled in the United States.

It was bound to happen eventually, but it still caught us by surprise when it did. Found last night and published earlier today, Photo Stealers' Corey Ann discovered that one of her images had been used by another 'photographer' who is passing off a whole bunch of other photographers' images as her own.

One would think that those in the photography and music industries would act as allies -- both industries, after all, are built upon the hard work or artists and storytellers who have spent years honing their craft.

However, all too often, they wind up butting heads as was the case with the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus story two days ago and, now, with this Facebook rant from a major band's tour manager.

Red Jumpsuit Apparatus has responded to the copyright controversy we told you about earlier today... sort of. We didn't receive a response directly from them, but because of the massive amount of attention the story has gotten both here and on Reddit, the band posted an interesting response to their Facebook.

In the beginning of April, Sydney-based photographer Rohan Anderson found himself embroiled in a nasty back-and-forth with the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus over a photo of his they had used without credit or permission.

Often, when you let someone know they've infringed on your copyright, you get an apology and an offer to make things right. This is not what happened to Anderson.

In a somewhat interesting turn of events regarding an extremely well-known photograph of former football star Desmond Howard, it has been settled that Howard will now be owner of the photograph, originally captured by photographer Brian Masck.