Last week we lost not only a Prince, but also a King of intellectual property rights for artists. Many talk the talk, but few have walked the walk and fought the fight, as did Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince was renowned by many for his business acumen almost as much as for his musical talent. He […]
Archive for category Copyright
Hip Hop Hop – Part 4 of 3
Apr 15
We are adding a 4th part to our 3-part article, as we received an e-mail doubting the authenticity of the practices of #2 in part 3. We were discussing how companies use social media, while hiding the fact that it’s them posting stuff. We wrote: “Companies make their own posts under a variety of methods […]
The Hip Hop Hop – Part 2
Apr 11
The music industry likes to claim how valuable their copyrights are one day and then claim that your copyrights are worth next to nothing the next. They try Hip Hop one day and then Hop Hip the next. It’s the ole Hip Hop Hop. In this column we’ll discuss that great proverb, “turnaround is fair […]
The Hip Hop Hop – Part 1
Apr 6
The story about how the record industry treats infringers and the lessons that photographers can learn from their efforts is so big, so good, we’re devoting 3 articles to it. The recording industry is under many of the same pressures as the photo biz. Movie studios actually make the same efforts but it’s harder to […]
Interesting question brought up in the National Law Review article here. It’s about the food porn people shoot and upload in restaurants all the time. And we mean ALL THE TIME. The article looks at the legalities of photographing a creative “sculpture” of food, a creative plating of food, or maybe a unique pasta shape. […]
An oft discussed and frequently misunderstood “defense” to copyright infringement is commonly referred to as the ‘educational use’ exception. There are few court decisions that are binding, where the use of a copyrighted work in what appears to be an educational piece but is really employed for the purpose of promoting a personal business or service did not qualify under the fair use exception even though Ed has had many of […]
It’s All About Eyeballs
Dec 2
By now you may have seen some recent reports in the media regarding YouTube’s purported willingness to defend “some” of their users regarding claims of “fair use” involving (certain) uploaded material. YouTube will purportedly pay up to a million dollars in legal fees in some of these situations although the exact nature of this “coverage” is as yet, difficult to discern. Lest […]
Paying it Forward
Nov 30
There is a great story about an accomplished photojournalist, Yunghi Kim donating $10,000 to set up 10 one-time grants for photographers. You can read about it in this story on the Photoshelter blog, here. We present it here with a smile. Ms Kim is able to make a wonderful donation because she collected a sum of money by […]
We’re back at it again. Another Copyright Zone webinar on the X-Rite website. We guess they’ll try and color correct our “blue in the face” photo. This one should be interesting as we’ll have the ability to do Q&A. We’ll be taking your questions and doing our best to figure out answers. Sign up at […]
