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 2
Apr 11
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
