Copyright & Legal
Photographers got a late Christmas present when President Trump signed the massive 5,593-page, $1.4-trillion omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief bill, titled the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. () Buried deep within this omnibus spending bill was the 63-page
CASE Act.
The United States Copyright Office recently created an
informative webpage dedicated to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; an influential law established in 1998 relating to copyright enforcement in the new digital age. The page provides a brief overview of each section of the law and its respective application.
In my previous story about the
Google Licensable Badge I made a mistake about when the badge would actually go live. It actually started appearing on the site on 31 August 2020. It will be interesting to see how much Google’s new Licensable Badge will help or hinder stock photo sales. To test it I did a search for
“Office Workers.” Then you are given several options including one for “Clip Art” which seems to be all illustrations. and another for “Stock Photos”. I clicked Stock Photos and among the options given are “Royalty Free” and “Stock Photography”.
Last week Google announced it’s intention to launch
Google Licensable Badge a function that will place a badge on images which require licensing before use when they are found by anyone doing a Google search. It is expected the launch will happen in the next couple of months.
The Google Licensable Badge concept has been discussed for more than
two years and seems to be getting closer to a release. Photographers will need to put a code in the IPTC header of each of their images. When a Google search finds such an image it will display the Licensable Badge with the image indicating that the image needs to be licensed for use. The viewer can then click on the badge and determine where they need to go to negotiate a license for use.
In March 2020, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court
ruling held that Congress lacked authority to abrogate state’s sovereign immunity from infringement suits in the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA). When Congress passed the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, it was responding to pressure from filmmakers like Rick Allen – as well as movie studios, software companies, and many other IP stakeholders – who said states were abusing sovereign immunity to avoid paying licensing fees.
After reading my story “
Copyright Protection For Photos Is Dead” Paul Melcher wrote, “If there is no more copyright, then there is no more licensing. If there is no more photo licensing then there is no more reason for the existence of ‘Selling Stock’"
A couple days ago we told you about the sad case of
Stephanie Sinclair who
had an image used by Mashable after she told them that $50 wasn’t a
sufficient payment for permission to use her copyrighted image. After 4 years a judge in the Southern
District Court of New York decided in Mashable’s favor saying that if a
photographer posts a picture on a “public” Instagram account anyone can
use that picture for any purpose whatsoever without permission or
compensation.? But now
Instagram tells Ars Technica, their TOS doesn't give companies like Mashable the right to make such uses. Which legal opinion is right?
One or my readers, Amyn Nasser, recently asked, “Isn’t it about time that ALL photographers started using copyright watermarks on all images that appear on social media platforms?" To a certain extent many photographers and agencies have tried for a decade or so to reduce infringement by placing watermarks on their images. For the most part the effort has been a total failure. This story will explain some of the reasons why.
Photographers interested in licensing rights to the images they produce, or in showing their work in hopes of getting assignments, have a dilemma. The only way they can earn money is to advertise and show potential customers what they can do, but the very act of showing in today’s Internet environment creates a huge risk that the images will be grabbed and used without compensation.
On May 21, 2020, the United States Copyright Office published its long awaited 512 (c) report and issued recommendations. The Copyright Office’s report looks at Congress’ intent in enacting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which offered service providers safe harbors to provide incentives for internet platforms and copyright owners to cooperate in order to detect and deal with copyright infringements in the online environment. The Report looks at that balance in light of the changes in the internet in the past 20-plus years and concludes that the current operation of the section 512 safe harbor system is unbalanced, with copyright owners bearing too much of the burden to deter piracy<
The Appellate Court of the Second Circuit in New York has decided an important important case for photographers regarding registrations and “Look Back” periods for copyright damages (Sohm v. Scholastic Inc., No. 18-2110, 2020 WL 2375056 (2d Cir. May 12, 2020). The court upheld the validity of the copyright registration procedure utilized by photography licensing agencies like Corbis Corporation, and held that courts may award copyright damages only for the three-year period preceding commencement of the action.
The U.S. Supreme Court says sovereign immunity protects state governments from copyright infringement lawsuits and has decided that it is OK for U.S. states to grab any photo they can find and use it without notifying or compensating the creator. The specific case that brought the matter to the nation’s highest court was filed by Rick Allen, an independent film producer and director in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who in the 1990s filmed the salvaging of the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard, that had run aground at Beaufort, North Carolina in 1718.
This week, the U.S. Copyright Office announced some changes in its special handling requirements and some additional information about the impact of the coronavirus on the copyright registration system. You can find the complete announcement
here.
A New York State appeals court overturned a lower court’s ruling and held that an insurer must defend McGraw-Hill Education Inc. in underlying copyright litigation in the case of McGraw-Hill Educ., Inc. v. Ill. Nat’l Ins. Co.
Adobe has announced a plan to
authenticate photos as way way of helping consumers determine if the images they see on the Internet are real or fake. How this will work hasn’t been fully spelled out, but is expected to be rolled out in “coming months” according to Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky (See the video of his presentation
here.
Getty’s decision to kill RM may be an
opportunity for all those agencies and individuals who want to: (1) continue to license images for higher prices based on usage and (2) enforce their claims of copyright ownership. The key will be in providing a service that will help users, not just benefit image creators.
With the death of RM licensing on the horizon, photographers need to consider whether there is much, if any, value in owning a copyright. Photography has become a commodity like corn or soybeans. Read this story for what the industry can maintain a value for at least some of the professional images being produced.
PicRights Europe GmbH has expanded its enforcement network. To bolster their growing enforcement activities in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, PicRights has added an experienced team in Vienna, Austria. As the newest enforcement partner, PicRights Austria will augment the long-established network in major markets in Europe, North America, India, Africa, South America and the Middle East, further cementing PicRights’ dedication to wide-ranging geographical coverage of key markets around the world for its clients.
Did you know that U.S. States can sometimes use your copyrighted photos for free? The case of
Allen v Cooper heading to the Supreme Court in November will test this right. Rick Gell, interim Executive Director of the
DMLA has interviewed the association’s Senior Legal Counsel Nancy Wolff of CDAS to try to understand how the state of North Carolina could claim this right and why the case has gotten all the way to the Supreme Court.
On September 10th the House Judiciary Committee unanimously passed by voice vote the Manager's Amendment to
H.R. 2426, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (CASE Act). This legislation will provide U.S. creators with a viable means for defending their copyrighted works through the creation of a small claims tribunal within the U.S. Copyright Office.
Many U.S. photographers are hoping the CASE Act, a new law working its way through Congress, will help them protect their copyright and make it easier for them to go after infringers. The law will establish a Copyright Claims Board (CCB), a Small Claims court and eliminate the need to use the expensive Federal Court system to pursue infringers. Photography trade associations – ASMP, PPA, DMLA, NPPA, APA, NANPA – and other members of the
Copyright Alliance have been seeking this change for over a decade.
Internet search technology has enabled professional photographers to discover more and more uses of their images. As a result, an increasing number of photographers are pursuing the users for compensation. Given how the system works customers who have legitimately licensed rights to use images are often required to do extra work to prove they did the right thing in the first place. This is not making these good stock agency customers happy. Some stock agencies fear that this extra hassle may drive some of their best paying customers to turn to more
FREE images rather than bother with paid sources.
The CASE Act which will establish a Small Claims system that targets copyright abuse is
working its way through Congress. The bill has finally been passed in the House and is awaiting action in the Senate. Photographers interested in understanding some of the downsides of this bill should read this FREE Story.
Free Images may not always be FREE. There are not only big legal risks for the users, but also potential time demands on users, creators and lawyers. Most users of Free images don’t recognize the risks they may be taking. One of the big questions for professional photographers is how to help those looking for free images to understand these risks.