There's a fine line between fair use, copyright infringement, and downright theft. And while some might argue where exactly that line stands, "rephotographer" and appropriation artist Richard Prince just got a Federal Appeals Court to take his side in what may turn out to be a landmark ruling regarding fair use.
I’d love to say I coined the term "Like farm", but it’s entirely possible I read it somewhere before, as a brief search on that term turned up other articles on the growing phenomenon of content farms on Facebook. For a while now, I’ve been watching my own news feed fill up with unattributed photos and artwork. And I think we've all seen the equally unattributed and ubiquitous quote art (either graphic design or simply pasted over photos). Although the amount of this content seems to rise …
In response to September 11th and London Bombings, the UK drafted a series of Terrorism Acts, giving their officers certain rights they thought would help fight terrorism. This included a section (58a) added in 2008 that made it illegal to photograph or film a police officer if the footage was likely to be useful to a terrorist. The police's interpretation of that section has since changed, but not before that "if" caused some newsworthy controversy.
In 2010, then BU journalism student Johannes Hirn put together a photo essay titled "Will Box for Passport." The essay was based around a boxer by the name of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, better known now as "Suspect #1" or the "Black Hat bomber" from the Boston Marathon bombing.
Andy Baio has some experience with copyright infringement, especially where iconic photographs are concerned. In case you didn't read our previous coverage on the matter, his story goes something like this: in 2009, he put together an 8-bit version of Miles Davis' album "Kind of Blue" called "Kind of Bloop," and for the cover art he had a friend create a pixel-art version of Jay Maisel's famous cover photo.
In 1991, photographer Brian Masck took one of the most iconic photographs in all of sports. Known forevermore as the "Trophy Pose," it captured then Michigan Wolverine Desmond Howard striking a Heisman pose IRL. Since it was taken, the photo has been used by everyone from EA to Nissan to Sports Illustrated, and several of them are now being sued by Masck for using the photo without his permission -- including Desmond Howard himself.
The National Press Photographers Association has decided to throw their hat in the ring with 15 other organizations that are all suing Google over what they see as "widespread, well-publicized, and uncompensated infringement of exclusive rights" perpetrated by the search giant's Google Books program.
A short form bill was recently introduced into the Vermont House of Representatives that ought to have photographers curious, if not worried. That's because this particular bill seeks to "make it illegal to [photograph] a person without his or her consent ... and distribute it," essentially outlawing most forms of public photography.
The San Diego Police Department is in hot water with photographers and First Amendment rights advocates everywhere this week over the way two of their officers handled a situation this last Saturday.
Montreal resident Jennifer Pawluck was arrested earlier this week after she posted the above photo of anti-police graffiti to her Instagram account. The photo shows a caricature of Montreal police Commander Ian Lafrenière with a bullet hole in his forehead, leading police to accuse Pawluck of criminal harassment against a high-ranking police officer.
In the two photographs above, the bottom image is a photo-manipulation created using the top image. Are they completely separate works of art? What if we told you the second photo was created without the original photographer's permission and submitted to a contest as an original artwork? What if we told you it actually won? …
If you sell a number of prints of a photograph as a "limited edition," should you be allowed to later reprint that photo in a different size, format, or medium and then sell the new pieces as a new edition? Apparently the US legal system believes the answer is "yes." …
Want to turn your friend's Facebook photograph into a mug to sip your morning coffee from? A new service called Photos At My Door can help you do that. It's an app that can access any of your Facebook friends' public photographs and turn them into products ranging from photo prints and canvases to mugs and mouse pads.
According to Reuters, Shutterfly has officially filed court documents in an attempt to shut down Kodak's My Kodak Moments app. Shutterfly -- who purchased the Kodak Gallery from the bankrupt company for $23.8M last year -- is claiming that the app is in violation of the terms of that sale, and demanding that it be taken down.
This famous photograph of legendary football wide receiver Desmond Howard is currently in the midst of a nasty legal battle. The photographer behind the image, Brian Masck, is suing Howard and a host of companies, claiming that his photo has been used without his permission for years for all kinds of commercial products and purposes.
Urban exploration photography has gotten quite a bit of publicity in recent years, with more and more photographers taking their cameras to off-limits and/or abandoned parts of their city in order to see and capture what most people never get a chance to. While it may be a fun pastime of practitioners and one that leads to beautiful images, not everyone is a fan.
Vice President Joe Biden's press secretary has apologized to a student reporter at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism's Capital News Service after the journalist was forced to delete photographs he shot at a domestic violence event featuring Biden and other politicians.
The ACLU writes that there's a 100-mile-thick buffer around the borders of the US called "The Constitution-Free Zone," in which electronic devices (e.g. laptops and cameras) can be searched and seized without suspicion. Wired writes that a man's laptop was seized in this zone in 2010 and returned 11 days later: …
The US Department of Justice issued a statement this past Sunday that confirms the fact that the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendment protect citizens' rights to photograph police in public places.
In a copyright dispute with So Delicious this past week, photographer Theron Humphrey chose to follow in Brandon Stanton's footsteps and give the infringers a positive way out of the situation. Instead of getting the long arm of the law involved, Humphrey suggested that the offending company instead donate the money he was owed to charity.
In February of 1993, 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson kidnapped and murdered two-year-old James Bulger. The two were eventually caught, and became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.
New Hampshire House of Representatives member Neal Kurk (R) recently backed a bill that plans to ban almost all aerial photography in the state by classifying it as a class A misdemeanor. The bill, HB 619-FN, seems to be aimed at protecting people's privacy; however, the fact that it specifically excludes government officials from the ban has raised concerns regarding just that.
NYC-based street photographer Brandon Stanton's work has attracted quite a few eyes since he launched his Humans of New York photo project in 2010. Among those eyes were marketing folk at the clothing company DKNY.
A serious car crash at the NASCAR Nationwide Series Drive4COPD 300 this past Saturday caused debris to go flying into the stands, sending a number of spectators to the hospital -- some with very serious injuries. A fan named Tyler Andersen was in the area where the accident happened, and had his camera recording video as the whole thing unfolded. After the incident made national headlines, Anderson posted the 1m16s video above to YouTube (warning: it doesn't show any injuries, but it's a bit …
Who owns public art illegally placed onto private buildings? That's a question that came up recently after a famous Banksy work in London was ripped out of the side of a building, shipped across the Atlantic, and put up for auction with an estimated final price of over half a million dollars.
Microsoft announced yesterday that it has entered into a patent licensing agreement with Nikon for Nikon's Android-powered digital cameras. While the details of the agreement were not revealed, Microsoft did say that it will begin collecting royalties from Nikon for certain camera models.
Les Irvin, the man behind the biggest Joni Mitchell fan site on the internet, is being sued by celebrity photographer Charlyn Zlotnik over four photos that were uploaded anonymously in the comments section of his website.
Grammy Award-winning Jazz singer Esperanza Spalding is currently in the midst of a legal battle with photographer Kevin Ryan over the cover art on her 2012 album Radio Music Society (pictured above). The cover shows Spalding sitting atop a vintage boombox that is actually a sculpture made of pictures attached to a wooden box.
Award-winning photographer Michael Wolf is raising some eyebrows with a new photo project titled "Window Watching." The series features photographs of high-rise apartment windows in Hong Kong, offering glimpses into the lives of people living inside the private residences. Basically, Wolf pointed a telephoto lens at open windows to photograph people going about their day-to-day-lives, without their knowledge and consent.
In December 2012, Instagram took steps toward profitability by adding some controversial monetization-related sections to its Terms of Service. The resulting outcry led to key sections being restored to original 2010 versions, but that didn't stop a certain user named Lucy Funes from launching a class action lawsuit against the photo sharing service.
Paparazzi working in the state of Hawaii might have to pack their bags and move back to the mainland. That's because a new bill requested by Aerosmith lead and part-time Maui resident Steven Tyler may soon ban celebrity photography in the 50th state all-together.
Drive across the west end of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and you're bound to see the iconic Portland, Oregon sign, commonly known as the "White Stag sign." It's an oft-photographed sign that was named a historic landmark back in 1977.
If you're the type of photographer who's wary of the rights you sign away when using most photo-sharing services, you might want to avoid having your photos handled by Walmart Canada's Photo Centre. Reddit user Plerophoria noticed the following section in the service's Terms and Conditions: …
Copyright law is in place to protect artistic expression, not individual ideas. That was the crux of the reasoning behind a recent federal appeals court ruling that saw no infringement on the part of Sony. In the court's opinion, Sony's photo (right) was not nearly similar enough to Donald Harney's (left) and "no reasonable jury could find 'substantial similarity' between Sony's recreated photo and Harney's original."
Photographer, blogger, and photographers rights' activist Carlos Miller has made headlines quite a few times over the past few years with his legal rumbles with authorities over photography in public places. Miller, who often instigates the disputes for the purpose of bringing photographers' rights into the spotlight, recently had another big confrontation with authorities in Miami (it's not the first time it has happened).
The issue of publishing social media photos of breaking news without their owners' permission is in the news again. After a helicopter crashed in central London last Wednesday, the London Evening Standard found a photo snapped by a witness named Craig Jenner and shared on Twitter. Unable to obtain permission from Jenner prior to its paper going to the press, the Evening Standard went ahead and published the image on its front page.
In one of the first major tests of intellectual property law involving social media services, a judge has ruled that news agencies cannot freely publish photographs posted to Twitter without the photographer's permission.
The last few days have been rough on BuzzFeed, as a Reddit outcry has gained more and more traction regarding some light painting photos the website used to create ads without seeking permission or giving credit.
The debate over whether or not the US Government should release photos of Osama Bin Laden's body has been going on ever since his death at the hands of Seal Team 6 in May of 2011. Last April, it seemed that the book had closed on the matter when a federal judge ruled not to release the photos for various reasons.
Earlier today, an Australian court put an end to a year-old tussle between photographer George Ferris and newlyweds Jarrad and Sheree Mitchell over the quality of the wedding photos he took for them. Although neither side really won, the court did make an interesting statement that could serve as a precedent in the future.
Judy L. Thomas over at the Wichita Eagle has a piece on why some photographers should spend a little extra time and money to register photos with the US Copyright Office, even though photographers own the copyright to photos the moment they're created.
Several mugshot websites -- including Just Mugshots, Busted! Mugshots, Mugshots Online, and MugRemove -- are ringing in the new year with a massive class action law suit. According to NPR, hundreds of people who have been exonerated of all charges and had their records sealed are suing the websites for not only keeping their mugshots up and using them in banner ads, but refusing to take them down and "scrub" them off the Internet unless the victims pay a hefty fee.
After Instagram backpedaled and removed some of the more controversial language in their new privacy policy agreement, it seemed the worst was over for the Facebook-owned company. The service has surely taken a hit, but when you have over 100M users, you can probably withstand quite a few. But in the words of Yogi Berra, "It ain't over till it's over," and if Instagram user Lucy Funes and San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk have anything to say about it: it ain't over. Those two …
If you're looking to make money from your photography, it's important to have the correct legal forms signed by the correct people, whether it's releases by models that pose for you or contracts with gallery owners who will sell your work. To get you started in figuring out what your contract needs to say, legal contract service Docracy offers samples of some of the most common and important legal forms that photographers use.
One of the big stories in the tech world at the moment is Facebook's effort to do away with its public voting system for approving changes to the service's policies (yup, Facebook is a democracy). Pranksters are taking advantage of the controversy to stir up some FUD among Facebook users. One of the things that has been circulating over the past few days is a bogus "chain letter" that people are posting as status updates, believing that their photograph copyrights are at risk. The message is …
Earlier this week we reported that it is now easier for photographers in the UK to pursue copyright infringement cases without having to shell out big money for a lawyer. While that law change is likely a big boon for photographers, there are other proposed law changes that have some photographers up in arms.
Photographers based in the UK now have an easier and cheaper legal path to take if they discover someone infringing upon their copyrights. Chris Cheesman of Amateur Photographer writes that photographers can now receive do-it-yourself justice without having to hire a lawyer: …
One of the big stories in the tech world this weekend was a policy brief published by the Republican Study Committee titled "Three Myths About Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix It," which people called "shockingly sensible" and a "watershed" paper. However, just one day after it went up, the paper suddenly vanished.
Photographer Jessica Nichols' most popular photograph on her Flickr account (above left) is titled "Loads of Ranunculus" and has more than 10,000 views. Nichols got a nasty shock a year ago when she discovered that American fashion designer Chris Benz had apparently turned the photo into numerous clothing designs for his Spring 2012 line, without Nichols' knowing and/or permission. Since July of this year, Nichols has been fighting against the infringement in an attempt to get the designer to …
A big win for photographers in Canada: as of today, you now officially own the copyright to all your photographs regardless of whether they were commissioned. The development comes as a result of Canada major copyright reform bill (Bill C-11) taking effect this morning. One of the stated goals of the new copyright law is to, "give photographers the same rights as other creators."
