Ongoing student protests at the University of Missouri over campus race relations have dominated the media over the the past several days. Now a new video showing the group blocking a student photographer is sparking controversy and discussion about press freedom.
The 6.5-minute video above shows student photographer Tim Tai being blocked from a public area of campus on Monday while on assignment for ESPN.
Over the last couple of weeks, the matter of photo contracts has once again been debated. First came Jason Sheldon’s blog post, calling Taylor Swift out on her hypocrisy when attacking Apple for demanding musicians give away their music for free while doing the exact same thing to concert photographers in her photo contracts. If you’re reading this, you’re probably well aware of that whole ordeal, so there’s no need to get into it further other than to say that I fully support Sheldon’s views.
Karl Baden should have known better.
I mean, what was he thinking, casually snapping a few pictures as dramatic sunlight broke through the clouds after one of last week’s late spring rainstorms? From the front seat of his car in a suburban Boston Trader Joe’s parking lot, of all places? What is he, nuts?
Dear Taylor Swift,
I have read your open letter to Apple where you give your reasons for refusing to allow your album ‘1989′ to be included on their forthcoming Apple Music streaming service.
I applaud it. It’s great to have someone with a huge following standing up for the rights of creative people and making a stand against the corporate behemoths who have so much power they can make or break someone’s career.
Should photographers be able to include copyrighted public building and sculptures in photos without having to worry about payment or permissions? The concept is called "freedom of panorama," and it's currently under attack over in Europe.
This past weekend, journalist Josiah Daniel Ryan visited a public pier in New York City to shoot a video of some boats there. He was then confronted by a number of security guards, one of whom told him that tripods "are not allowed on New York City property."
In today’s society, it seems that no knowledge is more prudent for photographers to learn than the rights of themselves and their photographs. Here at PetaPixel, we wanted to create a comprehensive one-stop guide to your constitutional rights to capture the world around you and what you are permitted to do with those photos.
Yesterday we shared how one photographer was surprised when a casual request to "share" her Facebook photo turned out to be a request to use it in a national TV ad. Unfortunately for photographers, it seems more and more companies are requesting photos in similarly subtle ways.
Three years ago, a woman named Felicia Anderson won a judgement against the city of Atlanta after she was arrested while photographing the arrest of a neighbor. She later complained that the city had largely ignored the court order. This week a judge agreed with her and held Atlanta in contempt for not taking steps to uphold photographers' rights.
For more than a decade, Brooklyn-based professional photographer Shawn Thomas has been an outspoken activist for photographers' rights to photograph and record in public on the streets of New York City. In the process, he has been arrested and jailed at least six times but never convicted of any crime.
This week, Thomas is making headlines again after posting a video showing how he put an end to an "unlawful search" in just 7 seconds while pointing a camera at officers.
Last week, an Australian mother took to the Internet to publicly shame a 'creep' she caught taking pictures of her children at a shopping center. After the story blew up and sparked all kinds of outrage, it turns out the man was simply taking a selfie with a Darth Vader cutout to send to his kids.
Yesterday we shared a startling video in which a woman who was pointing her smartphone camera at a group of law enforcement officers had the device snatched from her hand, smashed against the ground, and then kicked back at her. It turns out the man who did it is a deputy U.S. marshal, and the U.S. Marshals Service says it's now investigating the incident.
It was a month ago that a Texas lawmaker sparked a hoopla by proposing a bill that would limit the photography and filming of officers. If passed, anyone caught pointing a camera at an officer from within 25 feet could be charged with breaking the law.
Public outcry was swift and loud, and people even began sending death threats to the representative's office. Good news today: the bill is now dead.
A Texas lawmaker recently attracted death threats after proposing a law that would make it illegal for photographers to take pictures of police officers from within 25 feet of them. Colorado is moving in the opposite direction.
The state is considering several bills that would increase police oversight, and one of the bills outlines punishments for police officers who interfere with people who are lawfully using their cameras.
Prominent photography groups are sounding the alarm about a new bill that was just passed by the Arkansas Senate. SB-79, the "Personal Rights Protection Act," would require photographers to get written consent from a stranger to feature their likeness in a photograph for most purposes.
The law could have a huge implication on street photography, whose practitioners thrive on the ability to capture life and people on camera without having to constantly stop and ask for releases from the subjects.
Photographer Marisha Camp and her brother Jessie were recently passing through West Virginia on a nationwide tour for a documentary series when they were reportedly confronted by "a hostile mob." The residents were suspicious of the photo taking and allegedly harassed and detained the duo until a trooper arrived and escorted the photographers from the scene.
A week after Los Angeles agreed to train its law enforcement that public photography is not a crime, a bill has been proposed in Texas that would make it a crime for citizens to photograph or film police from within 25 feet of where the are.
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.
Los Angeles has agreed to pay a $50,000 settlement to three photographers after they were detained by LA County Sheriffs while taking pictures in public places. As part of the settlement, the city will also teach its sheriff deputies that photography is not a crime.
23-year-old freelance news photographer Andrew Flinchbaugh was arrested late last week in Lacey Township, New Jersey after capturing video of an accident and then refusing to hand his camera over to police as potential evidence for the crash investigation. The 10-minute video above is Flinchbaugh's recording of the confrontation that transpired.
A new "Ansel Adams Act" introduced in Congress could have big implications on photographers' rights across the United States. The bill aims to "restore the First Amendment rights of photographers" by removing restrictions on taking photos in public places.
A New York woman has been awarded $1.12 million in damages after being arrested back in 2009 while taking photographs outside a military base.
Instagram is a popular platform for celebrities to share photos of their lavish lifestyles, but it's also a social network in which many photos are published without permission and without credit to the original creator. Both of those things happened recently with an image posted by Ludacris.
David Jay, founder of PASS and Shoot and Share, is taking some heat yet again after he posted the above status on Facebook.
As it turns out, we all might have some skin in the Daniel Morel vs. AFP/Getty Images copyright game; and we're not just talking about emotional investment here, there are serious precedents being set.
At first, The Atlantic's profile of the duo behind the mega-popular @HistoryInPics Twitter feed reads like your standard "young geniuses find lucrative economic niche in this crazy new media world" piece.
Purloining somebody else's photos to promote your photography business has become depressingly common lately, but occasionally a new cretin comes forward to push the practice to a new level of sadness.
Getty Images and Agence France Presse are avid protectors of their own copyright privileges. But when the chaussure is on the other foot?
Haitian photographer Daniel Morel continues to find out that it's a whole different ball game, as the agencies try to evade the $1.22 million penalty levied against them for stealing eight of Morel's images of the aftermath of his country's devastating 2010 earthquake.
Seven sports photographers are suing the National Football League, Getty Images and the Associated Press in a complex case that argues the agencies went too far in allowing their images to be freely used for promotions by the league.
Normally, we wouldn't give much attention to the thoughts of an editor/publisher for a small community newspaper. But the response to photographer Kristen Pierson's notice of copyright infringement and invoice for payment is such a classic compendium of bad thinking on intellectual property that it would be a disservice not to share it ... just so you know what you're up against.
British photographer Jason Sheldon has won a settlement of £20,000 (about $32,300 US) over a stolen image of his (seen above), after initially being offered less than one percent of that.
Don't want trouble with the US Government? Then you might want to reconsider photographing anything that might cause suspicion among law enforcement -- especially if you're Middle Eastern or a 'Chinese national.' A newly published document has revealed that government agencies have been compiling lists of "suspicious activity" reports, many of which contain records of photographers legally taking pictures of bridges, dams, courthouses, and post offices.
Photographer/rights crusader Shawn Nee is back in the news, this time after he was detained and handcuffed by Los Angeles police for "interfering with an investigation" while taking photos in a public place.
Sob alert: Fashion/celebrity photographer Terry Richardson says he's likely to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars due to a recent ruling in a suit against Lady Gaga.
Today's award for taking copyright seriously goes to Philadelphia photographer/blooger R. Bradley Maule, who's suing the city's district attorney for allegedly misappropriating one of Maule's images as the background for his Twitter page.
Maule specializes in writing and photography about urban architecture, especially that of Philadelphia, as chronicled on his Philly Skyline blog. Maule says in his suit that he discovered this April that one of the images posted on his blog, a 2005 shot of the Philadelphia skyline manipulated to look more or less as it does now, was decorating the Twitter page for District Attorney R. Seth Williams.
A French court has banned distribution of a photo book and fined the photographer, essentially for including a portrait the subject didn't like.
Finnish lawmakers could soon rewrite the nation's copyright laws, as a citizen-originated initiative aimed at easing piracy penalties and protecting consumer rights makes it way to Parliament.
Detroit police are investigating an incident last week in which a photographer for the Detroit Free Press was arrested and had her camera seized while covering a police action.
The photographer who captured images of the Chicago Bears doing the "Super Bowl Shuffle" is suing the Chicago Tribune and Fox Sports for allegedly misappropriating the images.
A handful of groups representing professional photographers are calling for a boycott of a Conde Nast photo contest whose terms they consider exploitative.