Law

Ever wonder how and why copyright law came about? This interesting video will bring you up to speed. It's pretty biased against certain aspects of copyright law, but is interesting nonetheless.

The Daily Mail is no stranger to copyright infringement accusations, but this time they've taken it even further -- publishing a photo after the owner denied them permission to do so.

Freelance news photographer Phil Datz was recording the conclusion of a police chase from the opposite sidewalk last Friday when he was confronted by a police officer and commanded to "go away". Though he politely obeyed and moved a block further from the scene, the officer decided to arrest him for "obstruction of governmental administration". The latest news is that the department is planning to drop the charges and put its officers through "media relations training".

We reported yesterday that Kodak has taken defensive measures to prevent a hostile takeover for its extensive collection of digital imaging patents. One of these patents is an image previewing invention that has earned Kodak nearly $1 billion from Samsung and LG, and that's at the center of an ongoing legal battle with Apple. With the income generated by patent lawsuits dwindling, the company is now considering the sale of 1,100 patents (about 10% of its portfolio), including the valuable image …

There has been a lot of discussion regarding social media sites and their scary-sounding terms of services that always sound like rights-grabs. Here's what Photoshop guru Scott Kelby had to say after trying out Google+: …

Here's an update to the whole monkey copyright story that's been swirling around the blogosphere as of late: TechDirt points out that works that aren't the product of human authorship cannot support a copyright claim. Section 503.03 of Compendium II of Copyright Office Practices published by the US Copyright Office reads: …

A little update to the recent brouhaha over Google+'s Terms of Service: Tom W of Getty Images posted the above message to fellow Getty members on Flickr informing them that Getty's lawyers have no problems with the ToS. He writes, …

At what point does inspiration turn into plagiarism? That's the question that popped up last year when Rhianna was sued by David LaChapelle over scenes found in one of her music videos, and it's the same issue with a lawsuit recently filed by photographer Janine Gordon against photographer Ryan McGinley. Gordon claims that 150 of McGinley's images -- including some used for a Levi's ad campaign -- are "substantially based" on her photos. In the three pairs of disputed images shown above, the …

Just as the monkey photography story was dying down, a new twist emerges: on Monday tech blog TechDirt received an email from Caters News, the agency representing wildlife photographer David Slater, whose camera was hijacked by a monkey and used to shoot a number of self-portraits.

When we shared the story of how monkeys hijacked photographer David Slater's camera and unwittingly snapped some self-portraits, we asked the question "doesn’t the monkey technically own the rights to the images?" Techdirt, a blog that often highlights copyright issues, went one step further and dedicated a whole post to that question.

The legal battle between photographer Mike Hipple and sculptor Jack Mackie over a photo of Mackie's public art piece "Dance Steps on Broadway" has ended with Hipple paying a settlement out of court. Mackie writes, …

Between 1969 and 1972, NASA left 12 Hasselblad cameras on the moon to make room for moon rocks. One camera that wasn't left there was a 16mm camera called the "Data Acquisition Camera" used during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. It's now in the center of a legal dispute between the US government and astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth person to set foot on the moon. Mitchell claims that NASA allowed him to keep the camera as a souvenir after the mission, while NASA says that no evidence of this …

In 2009 Andy Baio of Waxy.org -- founder of Upcoming.org and former CTO of Kickstarter -- created Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute album to the best-selling jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. While Baio meticulously licensed all the music he used to create the album, he released a pixelated version of the original album cover (top, second from left) without licensing it, believing it was different and low-res enough to be considered fair use. He was then sued by the …

Turns out turning photographs into stencils isn't transformative enough to be defended as "fair use". In a case that has many similarities to the Shepard Fairey vs. AP legal battle, a judge ruled earlier this week against graffiti artist Thierry Guetta after Guetta (AKA Mr. Brainwash) had used a "stencil-ized" photo of Run DMC by Glen E. Friedman to promote an exhibition, concluding that Guetta's piece didn't differ enough from the original image to be considered fair use.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a new law last week that makes it a crime to post images to the Internet that "frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress." Violators found guilty of doing so now face up to one year in jail and $2,500 in fines.

29-year-old student and avid photographer Christopher Fussell was taking photographs of trains at a Baltimore station back in March when he was confronted by Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) officers. He was able to record the conversation, which shows the officers having a complete lack of understanding of laws and photographers' rights. Fussell writes, …

Libertarian magazine Reason created this video about the erosion of photographers' rights in the United States. One of the cases highlighted is the one involving Antonio Musumeci, who was arrested for filming a government building and came out victorious in a lawsuit with the help of the NYCLU.

In November 2010, Talking Points Memo published an article that included a wire photo taken on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. Yesterday they received a cease and desist letter from the NYSE claiming that photos of the trading floor cannot be displayed without the NYSE's permission, and that it owns trademark rights to images of the floor: …

Things aren't going very well for Sigma these days -- just days after the world balked at the $9,700 price tag it's attaching to the upcoming SD1 DSLR, Nikon is announcing that it's suing Sigma for $150 million over the vibration reduction technology found in Sigma DSLR lenses. Furthermore, it's demanding that Sigma put a halt to the manufacturing and sale of lenses that infringe on the VR patents, which might be a large number of OS (Optical Stabilization) lenses.

Photography lovers in Canada may soon be caught in the crossfire of the music industry's fight against piracy. The Canadian Private Copying Collective is pushing for a new tax on memory cards that would be based on the capacity of the cards -- $0.50 for 1GB or less, $1 for 1-8GB cards, and $3 for any card with over 8GBs. Law professor Michael Geist writes, …

In mid-2010, Time Magazine showed off a demonstration of a slick tablet app they were making in collaboration with The Wonderfactory. As it became widely shared across the web, HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs started receiving messages from fans who spotted his work in the video demo. Problem was, he had never given the magazine or the agency permission to use his work.

Since launching in 2008, TwitPic has been at the center of quite a few copyright controversies and legal battles, especially when disasters strike and Twitter users are able to publish photos of things that are happening well before major news outlets. Back in early 2010 photographer Daniel Morel had an iconic photograph taken during the Haiti earthquake widely republished in newspapers across the world without his permission after he uploaded the photos to TwitPic, then later that year …

President Obama announced last week that photographs of Osama bin Laden's body would not be released to the public due to concerns that it would incite violence and hatred, but a number of news agencies and advocacy groups are attempting to have them released using a Freedom of Information Act request. The Associated Press is one of the agencies that filed a FOIA request (they're also requesting that video of the raid be released), and the US government has 20 days to respond.

New Jersey is considering a new law that would make it a third-degree crime to photograph children without parental consent. More specifically, bill A3297 would prevent people from shooting photos or videos of children when "a reasonable parent or guardian would not expect his child to be the subject of such reproduction".

Alberto Korda's iconic photo of Che Guevara, titled "Guerrillero Heroico", is constantly at the center of copyright battles, with Koda's daughter Diana Díaz even licensing the image for branded products in order to fund the legal fights. The latest case involves a London gift company, takkoda, which recently began selling products featuring a dog Photoshopped to look like Che in Korda's photo. The designers insist that there was no copyright infringement but, rather than risking a prolonged …

Last month we reported that a Flickr photographer had found his photograph of a car being used as a Gap clothing design without his permission. It now appears that appropriating images from the web wasn't limited to that design, nor just the Gap brand -- Old Navy, another brand owned by Gap, is now being accused of stealing a car photograph as well. A photographer was strolling around in an Old Navy store in El Centro, California when he came across a shirt that he just couldn't stop staring …

Update: The ruling has been overturned, and a judge has ruled that Prince's usage is fair use.

A couple weeks ago we reported that a lawmaker in Florida was trying to make photographing farms a felony. Turns out the Florida Senate Committee on Agriculture actually approved the bill this week, but only after passing a couple amendments that make the bill a little more reasonable. The new version of the bill only concerns photographs taken by people who trespass onto the private farmland, and instead of a felony the crime will now be a misdemeanor. Whew.

A huge story last year was when a painter named Rick Norsigian came across 65 glass negatives at a garage sale, purchasing them for $45. He then had them examined by experts, who told him that they were previously undiscovered Ansel Adams photographs worth at least $200 million. Just as the find was being heralded as one of the greatest in art history, Ansel Adams' relatives and Publishing Rights Trust expressed skepticism that they were in fact Adams'. It then came to light that the photos …

After several Egyptian secret police buildings were raided recently by protestors, Egyptian blogger Hossam (AKA 3arabawy) stayed awake for two days organizing and uploading photographs of members of Egypt's secret police who have been accused of brutality and torture. The problem was, Hossam was uploading the images to Flickr, and Flickr wasn't happy about the fact that he didn't shoot them. Flickr soon vaporized the photographs and emailed him a warning for copyright violation.

This is the incredible story of how one man's photography was used hundreds of times all over the world without his permission before he finally found out.

A bill recently introduced by Florida state senator Jim Norman would, if passed, making taking pictures of farms a felony unless permission is granted by the owner.

Television network TBD recently sent photographer Jay Westcott to cover a Lady Gaga concert in Washington D.C. Upon arriving at the Verizon Center, Westcott was given a release form, on which the fourth paragraph read, …

Cop Block created an interactive map showing the "War on Cameras" in which each marker shows an incident where someone was "harassed, detained, threatened, attacked, arrested, or charged with a crime" by government officials for using a camera. It only has about 60 markers on it at the moment -- a more solution would be to have a crowdsourced map where anyone can contribute and add events. Still, this is pretty neat for those interested in photographers' rights (a pretty big issue last year).

A Tucson photographer recently found out the hard way that the public doesn't always side with photographers in copyright infringement cases, even if their claims are valid. About a month after the tragic 2011 Tucson shooting, portrait photographer Jon Wolf threatened so sue nearly three dozen media outlets after they showed a portrait he made of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green -- the youngest victim -- and demanded $125,000 from one newspaper for publishing the image.

Fashion photographer David LaChapelle is launching a lawsuit against Rihanna over the controversial music video for her song S&M. LaChapelle alleges that "the music video is directly derived from and substantially similar to the LaChapelle works" and that it copied the "composition, total concept, feel, tone, mood, theme, colors, props, settings, decors, wardrobe and lighting" of eight of his photographs.

Update on 12/18/21: This embed has been removed by its creator.

Earlier this year photographer Daniel Morel was shocked when a photograph he captured during the devastating earthquake in Haiti and posted to TwitPic was distributed by Agency France Presse (AFP) and published on the front page of newspapers around the world -- all without his permission.

64-year-old photographer David Hoffman has been awarded £30,000 and given an apology by the Metropolitan police after having five of his teeth knocked out when a policeman in riot gear charged Hoffman and hit him with a riot shield. The MPS released a statement staying, …

Last week one of the big stories in the world of photography was that Kuwait had banned the use of DSLR cameras in public places. The story originated with an article in the Kuwait Times, and was then widely reported by publications ranging from The Guardian to Amateur Photographer. People were in disbelief that a country would take such an unreasonable stance against a particular camera technology while leaving others legal (e.g. mobile phones, compact cameras, etc...). Turns out the whole …

Update: Turns out this story wasn't true.

A Texas-based photographer named David Langford received quite a surprise earlier this year when his friend tipped him off about a photo of his being used on vehicle registration inspection stickers in Texas. Turns out an estimated 4.5+ million stickers used a silhouette created from a photo of his from 1984 titled "Days End 2". Langford is now suing the state to stop further use of his photo on the stickers -- designed by prison inmates as part of a contract between the Department of Criminal …

Earlier this week stock agency FotoLibra received an email from English Heritage (the public organization that manages historical sites) that read, …

On November 9th, 2009, Software programmer Antonio Musumeci was filming the arrest of a protestor outside a federal courthouse in NYC when he himself was arrested. His main camera was confiscated, but he recorded the entire encounter on a second camera (the resulting video is above). In April 2010, the New York Civil Liberties Union sued the government on Musumeci's behalf, and yesterday it was was announced that a settlement had been reached, with the government recognizing the public's right …

Last week Scott Bourne published an article on Photofocus titled, "Photos On Twitter – What You Should Know". In it, he claimed that Twitter's terms of service (TOS) forced photographers to give Twitter a license to do whatever they wanted with photos shared through the service. The argument centered around a couple paragraphs found in the document: …

American NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II is suing British singer Dido over the photo used for the album cover of "Safe Trip Home". The photo shows McCandless "free-flying" hundreds of feet from the Orbiter using a Manned Manuevering Unit (MMU). McCandless was the first person to do an untethered spacewalk.

If you're sick of having your precious photographs ripped off and digital watermarking isn't your thing, you can use this translucent copyright symbol to embed an obnoxious copyright symbol in all of your photographs! The mysterious Martin Nachtwey tells duckrabbit, …

Charges have been dropped against Anthony Graber, a motorcyclist who filmed a plainclothes Maryland State Trooper during a traffic stop and uploaded the video to YouTube. According to the Baltimore Sun,

We've covered quite a few stories of photographers being harassed while doing legitimate photography, but what about cases in which photographers are doing the harassing? For many of you, paparazzi likely come to mind. The above video was published by Hollywood.tv back in 2008, and shows supermodel Kate Moss trying to leave Los Angeles International Airport with her young daughter while being hounded by a swarm of paparazzi.

The model on the cover of indie band Vampire Weekend's album "Contra" is suing the band, its record label, and the photographer for more than $2 million. Ann Kirsten Kennis discovered that her image was on the cover of the top-selling album when her daughter purchased it and brought it home to show her.