Copyright & Legal
The White House says the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) goes too far.
"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious
problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not
support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases
cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global
Internet," leaders from the Obama Administration officially responded
Saturday morning on whitehouse.gov. "We must avoid creating new
cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the
Internet."
A philosophical battle is being waged on the web between
ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) and
APA (American Photographic Artists) over how to address the issue of the lack of compensation from the
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) for the collective licensing of reprography and digital uses of literary and visual works, and other secondary uses of audiovisual works. Here’s some background.
U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody denied Pearson Education Inc’s motion
for dismissal of Jon Feingersh Photography Inc’s (JFPI) suit alleging the
textbook publisher used dozens of his copyrighted photos in excess of
the limited-use licensing rights the company had obtained.
What should you do when you discover a unauthorized use of one of your
images? Attorney Carolyn E. Wright (whose also a stock photographer) has
prepared a brief document outlining the steps photographers need to
take once they discover an infringement. The steps you take may limit
your ultimate remedies so be sure to first understand what your options
are.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has received $307,700
from the Authors Coalition of America (ACA). The funds are part of a
distribution from a European Collecting Society that is authorized to
collect payments for the copying of non-title-specific copyrighted
works. In order to facilitate photocopying the law allows it to take
place in some instances without requiring that the copyright holder’s
name be recorded or that he, she or the corporation holding the
copyright be directly compensated for the use.
In the case of DRK Photo vs John Wiley & Sons Inc. in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Arizona Judge Frederick J. Martone
denied the defendant’s motion to seal circulation information for 40
titles that were part of the complaint.
In Norbert Wu’s copyright infringement suit against Pearson Education, Inc. before Judge Richard J. Holwell, in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York the court GRANTED class certification to one of Wu’s causes of action.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) will be launching a series of 10 free webinars on the “The Future of Art & Commerce” on October 5, 2011 between 1:00 and 2:30 pm EST. In the first session Susan Carr and Richard Kelly will deal with
What Everyone Should Know About Copyright. Click
here to register for this event. For details on all 10 webinars which will take place about every other week through March 2012 click
here.
Recently a photographer asked how to price extended educational use of
an image that was first licensed by the publisher for textbook use two
years earlier. Initially the image was printed full page, inside. Now
the publisher wants virtually all rights for 20 years. This story explains how I would approach the problem.
Every professional photographer in the world should
add his or her name to the PLUS Registry. It’s FREE. It will take a couple minutes at most. And it may help someone
who wants to pay you money to find you.
Anyone who has been in the photo business for any length of time knows
that Jay Maisel is one of the truly great photographers and a
first-class person. His unique vision kept him busy for over 40 years
shooting annual reports, magazine covers, jazz albums, advertising and
more for clients worldwide until he retired from active commercial work
in the late ‘90s. This story is about what happened when an artist of this caliber exercised his right to protect his work.
On Tuesday June 7, 2011 U.S. District Judge James C. Francis IV denied Norbert Wu’s request for a preliminary injunction and sanctions and refused to stop Pearson Education Inc. from communicating with members of a proposed class of photographers. Pearson had been temporarily restrained from negotiating with other photographers and stock agencies with regard to unauthorized use claims until the judge determined whether or not a class action could be certified. Now Pearson is free to move ahead and settle photographer's claims.
Image fingerprinting could be a solution for many of the problems photographers face in trying to protect their images. The technology for providing, in camera, a unique fingerprint of every image a photographer creates is already available. All that has to happen is for the camera manufacturers to build this technology into the next models of their professional equipment.
APA (American Photographic Artists) members have “uniformly agreed that Getty Images’ proposed changes are unacceptable.” Through its counsel,
Nelson & McCulloch LLP, APA contacted Getty Images prior to the April 30th deadline and made clear its position on the new contract. The organization requested, “that Getty Images stay or extend its self-imposed deadline for forcing contributors to sign (its) agreements.” Getty Images refused to respond to APA’S inquiry.
Getty Images has announced that it has acquired PicScout, a leader in
identifying image use, metadata and licensing information on the web.
Founded in 2002 by Offir Gutelzon and Eyal Gura the company is based in
Herzliya, Israel and has 60 employees. The PicScout brand will remain,
and the R&D team is expected to remain in Israel.
Every photographer detests copyright infringers. When one of their
images is used without compensation they want to be paid not only their
normal fee for the use but a reasonable amount for chasing down the
infringer and enough penalty to insure that the infringer won’t do it
again. The goal is to give everyone incentive to be honest. But is going after infringers really accomplishing that goal and is it generating more business for the future?
Prior to 1976 a commissioning client owned the copyright to images
created by photographers. At that time the vast majority of images that appeared in
publications and advertising were created on assignment. The 1976 copyright law changed all that and gave photographers control of their work and the ability to license narrow and specific rights. Now, the business world is pushing photographers back into a model that
looks very much like pre-1976. The promise of a continual income stream
from our creations often seems distant and unobtainable.
The new
Getty Images Contributor Agreement is now available. It raises a number of issues for Getty photographers. Photographers must sign the new contract before the end or April in order to continue to submit new images. If they choose not to sign Getty will continue to license their images until their current contract expires. At that point their images will be removed from the database.
Federal appeals court judge Denny Chin has rejected Google’s proposed
settlement of copyright claims arising from the company’s digitization
of books. Since the case is a class action, the court, and not the
parties, must determine whether the settlement is fair, adequate and
reasonable.
The White House has proposed sweeping revisions to the U.S. copyright law, but the changes discussed in the 20-page white paper (
PDF) do very little, if anything, to help still photographers.
Recently the U.S. Copyright Office launched a pilot program that enables
photographers to use the Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system to
complete group registrations of “databases that predominantly consist of
photographs" or “published photographs."
In a recent talk at the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at
Columbia University as part of a program titled
Collective Management of
Copyright: Solution or Sacrifice Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director of
American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) outlined the general
state of the photo licensing business and offered some possible
solutions.
If you license rights to your photos for textbook use then here are a few articles you should read.
Skeptical photographers are struggling to understand whether Corbis’ new Contributor Gateway and the elimination of foreign office fees will actually benefit them. Many have focused on the royalty reduction from 40% to 37.5%. In order to participate in the Gateway, contributors must sign a new contract with Corbis and agree to this lower royalty rate. However, the 35% foreign sales office fee that is currently being deducted from sales made by any office outside the contributor’s home territory will be eliminated
Copyright lawyers Dan Nelson and Kevin McCulloch provide some background on how major U.S. textbook
publishers have been—and, indeed, still continue to—systematically
infringe photo the copyrights of the photographs they use in
textbooks and various other materials. They explore some of the
various factors that allowed this situation to occur and go unnoticed,
despite being an industry-wide practice that has given rise to some of
the most egregious cases of copyright infringement in recent memory.