Law

A 42-year-old woman from New Jersey is suing the popular theme park Hersheypark after she fell from a watercraft while posing for a picture at a photo op spot.

Earlier this month, we reported that the city of Laguna Beach, California, required photographers to pay $100+ for a photo permit even if they were shooting non-commercial photos on public land. After word of the policy spread and complaints began flooding in, Laguna Beach has now changed its policy, making it clear that personal photography is free to do on public property.

If you’ve heard of Bitcoin, then you’re peripherally familiar with blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed database technology that creates a public ledger of every transaction within the system – perfect for cryptocurrencies that lack a central issuing bank.

Noted music photographer Danny Clinch, who took photos of Tupac for Rolling Stone, is suing Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters for copyright infringement after they allegedly used his photographs on their merchandise.

If you're a photojournalist who covers stories in dangerous places, here's something you should know: don't try to bring bulletproof vests or gas masks through airports in Thailand, as they're considered "war weapons." At least two journalists (including one photographer) have found this out the hard way over the past two years.

A tiny Swiss village has just passed a law that bans people from taking photos. Why? Because they want to save you from the pain of FOMO, or the fear of missing out.

There have been some legal rumblings in the camera industry over the past couple of months. It's an ongoing patent dispute between Nikon and two other companies involved in camera technologies: Carl Zeiss and ASML. The latest news is that the United States has opened an official patent infringement investigation into Nikon's products.

A Montana-based photographer has filed a lawsuit against the Republican National Committee, accusing the RNC of willfully infringing upon her copyright by using one of her photos on a political mailer without permission.

An Oregon-based plant retailer was just awarded almost one million dollars in actual damages by a federal jury in one of the biggest photography copyright wins of the year so far. Despite the strange circumstances of this case, it's being called, "a huge win for artists, photographer, and creators."

Check out this Nikon DSLR rig, which apparently uses a pistol-style grip for triggering the shutter. It seems this kit looks too much like a firearm for the TSA's liking.

A BBC photographer was detained for an hour in the UK this past Thursday under the country's anti-terror. His offense? Shooting photos of a town hall.

ME: I don’t want to be a dick but could you please stop using my image on your website?

THE INTERNET: Why?

Is it copyright infringement if someone embeds your tweeted photo into a news article? One UK photographer says "yes," and he's taking news company Sky News to court over it in a case photographers should be watching closely.

Celebrity Khloé Kardashian has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit over a photo of herself she posted to Instagram. She's being accused of removing copyright info found on the image and sharing it to her millions of followers without permission.

The estate of legendary artist Andy Warhol has filed a lawsuit against New York City photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The reason? Goldsmith believes Warhol violated her copyright by turning one of her portraits of Prince into a painting.

Photographer Jana Romanova is suing VICE Media for using a photo from her series Waiting without permission... again. This is Romanova's second copyright infringement lawsuit agains VICE over the same photo series.

The priceyness and portability of photo gear makes camera rental and retail outlets a popular target of burglars, and last week yet another big name in the industry was looted. The camera store Midwest Photo in Columbus, Ohio, was broken into on March 15th, and a huge number of items were stolen.

A French court has ruled that American appropriation artist Jeff Koons infringed the copyright of French photographer Jean-François Bauret in creating one of his celebrated sculptures, Naked (1988).

Photojournalist Mannie Garcia, known best for his famous portrait of former President Obama, has finally succeeded in winning a $45,000 settlement for his unlawful arrest by Montgomery County police in Maryland in 2011.

The US Copyright Office is currently doing a study on the "Moral Rights of Attribution and Integrity." Want to play a part in the development of US copyright law moving forward? You can weigh in and share your views on the matter.

On Saturday, PetaPixel ran the story of a photographer whose photo had been imitated to a surprisingly thorough degree by a German ad agency. While a poll on that article suggested that a clear majority (~74%) of respondents saw it as unethical plagiarism, I thought I’d dig into the legal aspects a bit.

The New York Times just reported an incredible story of how a 23-year old recent college graduate created a fake news story about fraudulent Clinton votes in Ohio and netted $22,000 on a fake news website from ads.

In case you were wondering, the answer is "Yes," the FAA means business when it comes to drone operators violating airspace regulations. This unfortunate lesson comes at the hefty cost of $200,000 for one Chicago-based company.

Seattle seems to be the epicenter of drone-related mishaps this week. Just a few days after we shared the story of a man who ran his drone into the city's iconic space needle, another man has been convicted of reckless endangerment for knocking a woman unconscious when his drone fell out of the sky at a parade.

In their recently released report titled "Growing Up Digital," the UK Children's Commissioner did something we wish tech companies would do more of: they had a lawyer "translate" Instagram's Terms of Use into language that children (and their parents) could actually understand.

House Republicans have put forward a proposal to fine representatives who shoot photos or videos on the floor of the chamber -- a move widely viewed as a response to House Democrats staging a sit-in in June to demand a vote on gun control legislation.

Here’s a simple, fair, and free-to-use wedding photography contract that includes payment schedule, harassment, privacy, deliverables, and cancellations—in other words: everything you need in a professional service agreement—because Christmas!

For award-winning Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou, his October 1st trip to the United States started out like any other assignment. But while his plan was to cover the Standing Rock protests for the CBC, he never got past the US border agents.

What began as one of the most explosive, publicized, and potentially ground-breaking copyright lawsuits in the world has ended in less-than-explosive terms. Carol Highsmith's $1 billion lawsuit against Getty Images has, for the most part, been thrown out of court.

Blockai, the company that burst onto the scene a few months ago by offering a totally novel way to protect your photo copyrights, is expanding onto Instagram. Now, all it takes to claim copyrights on your Instagram photos is a hashtag.

The headline might seem more at home in a totalitarian country, but it comes from right here in the United States. Several journalists and documentary filmmakers are facing serious felony charges and decades of prison time for filming oil pipeline protests in North Dakota and Washington State.

When I was in college, I lived for a while in a crappy little rental house next to a cemetery. Neither I nor my roommate, Brad, knew how to cook anything, and we ate bologna sandwiches pretty much all the time. Eventually, someone gave us a cookbook so simple that even a half-starved English major could learn a few basic dishes--the first page actually had step-by-step instructions, with pictures, for making toast in a toaster.

Donald Trump Jr. sparked controversy this week by Tweeting a photo of a bowl of Skittles to explain the "Syrian refugee problem." Now the story has taken a strange new twist: the photographer behind the Skittles photo says that Trump Jr. used the photo without his permission. What's more, the photographer himself was a refugee.