Don’t get me wrong, I want the photographer to win. I want it so bad that my arthritis hurts. We have a long wait to see. I think the photographer will win because the various online agreements are, in my opinion, are unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.

With that said, four decades ago when I was an aggressive editorial photographer, long before federal express let alone the Internet, I had a ‘Contact’ in the States to whom I could send work to be then sent on to others. That is an easy thing to do so you do not have to rely on Twitter. Had I shot the images in question, I would have sent them, not to Twitter, but to either of my 2 adult children each knowing what to do with them.

While ASMP rarely gets involved in trial court cases, I would urge them to get into this one. In this case, and let me repeat, — in THIS CASE — the time to get involved is NOW! The crux of it is unconscionable Internet agreements.

Reminds me of a music company in Switzerland that picked up little known band music CDs, then posted them to iTunes as if they had the rights to them. I only found out about that because I shot a few covers for one of the bands, and I was surprised one of my images showed up on iTunes with the music that the band didn’t even know was there. To Apple’s credit, they quickly pulled the music down once notified. Unfortunately the logistics of a legal challenge in Switzerland for a small band in California meant that was the end of that ordeal. I suspect that was the business model idea in the first place, with the thinking that the Swiss company was unlikely to be challenged in court by anyone not living in Switzerland.

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

This is neither here nor there. Courts have increasingly concluded that essentially *all* uses can be considered commercial in some way, indirectly or otherwise. That said, breaking news is in the public interest – even if it is done by a commercial organization.

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

A newsworthy photograph (factual) as opposed to a work intended to be creative or expressive.

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

Again, this could go either way, but presumably the ‘work’ is a high-resolution photograph, and the reproductions were smaller in scale. The creator also retained his ‘right to first expression’ by being the first person to post these in public – another fair use consideration.

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Typically the most heavily weighted factor, this weighs heavily in favor of the use. Wait, what? But they didn’t pay him! True, but now he has more free publicity than he knows what to do with … all for a photograph he put up for the public to see.

Moreover, coming back to the point of them counter-suing him, in the United States (for example) there exists a provision for just such cases – specifically: if the creator misrepresents their position as sole copyright holder they can be sued for legal fees and the like.

Wait, what? The guy with the copyright can be sued? Heck yes, and with good reason: put yourself in the shoes of someone who *did* use an image under fair use – suddenly you are sued, spend tens of thousands defending yourself, and win … but you still are out tons of cash.

It is the *responsibility* of someone wishing to pursue people they *believe* to be infringing to *first know their rights* – in this case, it is clear the photographer did *not* know his rights, uploaded the images to Twitter and blamed someone for using them *as if they had stolen them straight from his camera*

All I see these days is photographers bemoaning how technology is robbing them, but it’s time to realize that six works spoken by Kevin Kelly sum up the situation in a nutshell: the internet is a copy machine. You want to protect your works? Go back to the 20th century. You want to profit from them? Change your biz model.

agreed don’t put any of your work that has real value here.

That is some 5-Star irony, and really made me laugh

( Getty/couth part, not poor Danny part)

Who ever it was that jacked the images is the beginning of the chain and APF is at the other end. It seems that anyone who purchased licensing from APF might get a hand slap in the whole situation.

APF should hang by the yardarm until the sharks show up. Wait they’re circling. I personally think that the end result will be just like what happend between CorbiS and Chris Usher. Oooops an error on my previous comment I refered to Coris as Corbin.

I just realised that hosting my pictures on blogspot (http://davidikus.blogspot.com/) may mean I am losing rights to them and that I have not checked this… I need to work on that pretty quickly, actually. I shall remember photoshelter as a good place to host images. Thanks for the tip.

ASMP commissioned attorney Chris Reese to undertake a review of the Terms of Service (TOS) of six social media sites and to prepare findings and recommendations. The sites included in his assessment are Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. This report presents recommended best practices, considerations, common terms used, and hypothetical situations photographers may face when images are posted on social networking sites, and we posted our findings here

http://asmp.org/articles/social-media-terms-service.html

If you are considering the use of any Social Media for distribution of your images it would be prudent to read this article first.

Thanks again Rob.

This might be a better interview for Rob to have with Santiago Lyon the DOP of Associated Press down the road.

Selling directly to any local newspaper is not going to get you much money $200-1000.00 depending on the size of the publication and where the image is published. Remember to note “One Time Use Only! and No Archive!” when you deal with them or they will go back and reuse your image time and time again.
Also make sure you are talking one publication and not the corporation. An example is Media News Group owns almost every newspaper along the I-10 corridor from the LA Daily News to Redlands. You don’t want them all to get your image for free.
Most picture desks have been reduced to nothing these days and the photo editor is going to put his efforts in images from their staff and yours will go on the back burner.

This is what it takes to keep a staffer safe in a wildfire.

1. $14.50 Wildland Gloves
2. $70.00 Nomex Shirt*
3. $70.00 Nomex Pants*
4. $25.00 Wildland helmet Model FH911C
5. (n/a) Wildland helmet assembly
6. $23.00 Goggles
7. $109.00 Fire Shelter (No Norair Lancs/Plastics, Metor Plastics or Cecile units)
8. $20.00 Wildland Nomex hood
9. $44.95 Web Gear (holds two canteens, fire shelter and fanny pack)
10. $20.00 Two canteens
11. $150.00 Boots

“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”

If you run your images through LR2 or the upcoming version LR3 three you can have copyright data imbedded in the meta data. You can also have a variety of copyright watermarks/logos appear where ever you desire.

Fines or Jail time really don’t have to impact to stop the theft of IP, art, content of any type. Our prisons are already overcrowded. Maybe we could send the offenders to Greenland. Public display of humiliation would be a start. I think that they are just trying to get away with a Corbin, trying to establish a better precedence so the big #&%$@(!@#*$(*@’s can get away with not paying anything! It’s an overt attempt at screwing photographer worse than Google tried to do with books, the F’ers!

Gotta be cheaper than fighting this. Especially with BS arguments about Twitter’s TOS that aren’t even right about its terms.

It’s especially stupid because their business model relies on others respecting their copyright? “Don’t steal our stuff (but we can steal yours)” isn’t exactly great PR for them.

They can’t even argue they were ignorant of the law, because companies in their line of work HAVE to employ lawyers.

Getty and AFP know that distribution channels like Twitter undermine their business model, especially for breaking new. It is in their best interest to convince professional photographers and buyers that Twitter or anything similar is dangerous. The press is helping them spread this message. PDN for instance (http://www.pdnpulse.com/2010/04/insult-to-injury-afp-suing-photographer-it-stole-photos-from.html) just runs AFP’s quote: “Anything uploaded to Twitter is free for re-distribution” without questioning whether it’s either relevant or true. This whole suit brought by AFP smells like marketing with fear tactics to me.

Good point.