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 […]
Archive for category Legal Things
The Hip Hop Hop – Part 1
Apr 6
Hulkamania
Mar 22
The term “Hulkamania” is defined by the Urban Dictionary as: The strongest force in the universe. That definition has now taken on even more street cred with the decision in the Hulk Hogan case. And we present another 140 million new reasons to get written, signed model releases – especially in sensitive issue situations – always. […]
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 […]
There are many “big lies” out there with new ones sprouting every day. We try to get to as many as we can, but we’ll never live long enough just to cover all of the ones already spreading. Especially with the help they get on the Internet. “It must be true, I read it on […]
Perhaps no issue within the topic of Model Releases draws as many questions as the necessity to use “sensitive issue” model release forms. We suggest that such forms be used when the model is going to be employed in an image/ad/film/video etc. and will appear: nude, semi-nude, be portrayed as a drug addict, criminal, suffering […]
You are driving down a busy thoroughfare when you see a stop sign and act accordingly. Your fellow citizens driving in similar type cars see the very same sign and read it as “Go”. Perhaps you find yourself entering elevators clearly seeing the word ” up” while others just as literate as you are looking at the very same signage and just […]
Our New B&H Video Is Up
Sep 10
Hi all, our brand new, hour and a half video, we did at B&H is up on their YouTube feed. A lot of new stuff for us, we think you’ll find interesting and enlightening. In any case, we had fun as usual. Here’s the link. Please let us know what you think.
Whitewashing a Fence
Aug 29
Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence yesterday and the Creative Commons doing it today.
