Flickr Using Questionable Excuse To Take Down Photos From Egypt

from the unfortunate dept

On Friday, after Clay Shirky's excellent talk about social media and the Middle East at SXSW, someone in the audience pointed out how some photos from Egypt of secret service agents had been removed from Flickr. Shirky later tweeted a link to coverage of the takedown letter, which mentions vague terms of service violations. Yahoo later came out and claimed the images were taken down because they weren't taken by the uploader. Of course, as some have pointed out, that's a bogus excuse, since plenty of people -- including Flickr's top employees -- regularly post images that they did not create. And, of course, in true Streisand Effect fashion, all this has really done is call that much more attention to the images and information that was taken down.

Filed Under: egypt, photos, takedowns
Companies: flickr, yahoo

Photographer Demanding Cash From Sites Using Palin's Official Governor Photo

from the copyright-gone-mad dept

Pickle Monger points us to the latest ridiculous story involving copyright and the government. Apparently, a photographer named Jeff Schultz, who has taken many photos of Sarah Palin, took the photo that Palin used as her "official state photo," while she was governor of Alaska. Members of Palin's administration say they regularly handed out that photo to all sorts of folks as Palin's official headshot. Not surprisingly, the image can be found widely on the internet.

However, it appears that Schultz is now claiming that those who use it are violating his copyright, and are demanding they pay up. And not just a marginal sum, but $11,750, according to the demand letter embedded below. The story covers a demand letter that was sent to a restaurant owner who, back during the last Presidential election, hosted an event where he showed the VP debate between Palin and Biden. In promoting that event at the restaurant, the owner pulled Palin's official pic and put it on his website, where it has remained "in the archives" where almost no one sees it. However, Schultz or his lawyers found it and demanded money from the restaurant owner. Even after the image was pulled, they still demanded money, and rather than fight it, the restaurant owner eventually paid up. Schultz's lawyers also demanded a gag order, that he not talk about the threat and the demand for cash, but he refused to agree to the gag order. Of course, this just makes you wonder how many other folks did pay up and can't talk about it...

Palin's deputy press secretary while she was governor notes that Schultz did, in fact, retain the copyright, but that seems silly. If you're going to post a headshot like that for an official government figure and use it as distribution material for all sorts of media, it seems like you should automatically relinquish any copyright on it. That Schultz is going around now, years later, and demanding cash (and silence!) from those using it seems like yet another story of copyright trolling.

Filed Under: copyright, jeff schultz, photos, sarah palin, shakedowns

Kodak Getting More Patent Aggressive: In Legal Fight Over Photo Sharing Site

from the oh-come-on dept

About a year ago, we were disappointed to see Kodak start to sue mobile phone companies for patent infringement, wondering if this was a sign of trouble at the company. As we've seen in the past, when big companies start filing patent infringement lawsuits, it's a sign that they're having trouble innovating in the marketplace, so they switch to trying to use the law to hold back competitors. It seems that the company is taking things even further and has sued photo-hosting/sharing site Shutterfly. Years back, you may remember, Kodak bought a similar site, Ofoto, and apparently now it's claiming that only it is allowed to do some rather basic photos hosting site features, such as selling prints or photobooks from the site. Shutterfly has its own patents and has filed a countersuit -- which Kodak called a "litigation tactic." Yeah, it's a litigation tactic: responding to a silly patent lawsuit with a similar one. Problem is, Kodak is the company that kicked off this "litigation tactic."

Filed Under: patents, photos, photosharing
Companies: kodak, shutterfly

Righthaven Takes On Drudge Report

from the copyright-fun dept

We recently noted that MediaNews, the second largest newspaper publisher in the US, had apparently signed up with Righthaven to start suing blogs and other websites for using any content from the Denver Post. It looks like for its second lawsuit over Denver Post content, Righthaven has gone big: it's suing Matt Drudge, the operator of the famed Drudge Report, because he used a photo from the Denver Post. This is a bit different than the usual Righthaven lawsuits over copies of articles -- and perhaps an even tougher claim. Drudge may have a decent fair use claim on a single photograph, though that may depend on a lot of other details. Still, all this is doing is making me wonder why anyone would ever want to use any Righthaven connected publication as a source ever again.

Filed Under: copyright, drudge, matt drudge, photos, trolling
Companies: drudge report, medianews, righthaven

AFP Still Not Giving Up On Its Bizarre Claim That Twitpic Images Are Freely Licensed To Anyone

from the common-sense-ruling dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about an absolutely bizarre lawsuit, where the newswire AFP -- a company who has claimed that merely linking to its stories is infringement -- had sued a photographer whose photograph AFP had used without permission (and with a false credit). The story was so convoluted and filled with confusion that it was really quite amazing that anyone involved is still pushing forward with the case. The "short" version is that a photographer in Haiti when the earthquake happened earlier this year opened a Twitter and a Twitpic account soon after the earthquake, in order to show off some of the photographs he had taken. Another person copied those photos and pretended they were his (also on Twitpic) and offered to license them. The AFP saw the photos from the second person (who didn't actually have the rights to them) and then posted them on its own stories, crediting the second guy.

Soon after this, the actual photographer saw the photos and sent a cease & desist. The AFP then sued the actual photographer, claiming that it had not violated his copyrights. The AFP's argument for this was so confused that it raised questions about whether or not the AFP even really understood what the company had done. First, it claimed that Twitter's terms of service says the following:

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

It seems the AFP somehow interpreted this to mean that any content posted to Twitpic could be freely used. There are two massive problems with this line of argument. First, Twitpic isn't Twitter (something that no one involved in the lawsuit on either side seemed to realize -- which is just downright sloppy) and posting an image to Twitpic has nothing to do with Twitter's terms of service. Second, even if the images were covered by Twitter's terms of service, those terms are boilerplate language describing the license between the user and Twitter -- not between the user and any third party. This is plainly obvious from the language of the clause, which notes that it "grants us" the license. The "us" is Twitter. Not any third party. The Twitter license then does allow Twitter to post that content elsewhere -- but that right does not just extend to any third party. This is pretty standard stuff that is found in just about any internet service's terms of use.

I had kind of figured that after this rather massive set of mistakes was highlighted, AFP would realize its errors and back off from the lawsuit. No such luck apparently. Venkat Balasubramani has an update on the case, suggesting that the AFP is sticking by its totally illogical claims. What brought this on is that Twitter has apparently clarified its terms of service, to avoid this sort of situation (even though the original terms seemed pretty clear), but the AFP is still insisting that its tortured interpretation of the terms supports its position. It's somewhat bizarre to see that no one involved in the lawsuit has realized just how insanely weak this position is. It seems like a huge waste of effort for an interpretation of terms of service that, if actually believed, would likely come back to haunt AFP.

Filed Under: licensing, photos, twitter
Companies: afp, twitpic, twitter

Couple Claims That Merely Talking About A Photo Is Copyright Infringement

from the good-luck-with-that-theory dept

Bert Reyntjens writes "Some time ago, the (nude) photograph of the wife of Helmut Lotti, a Belgian singer, was used in a famous Flemish quiz 'de slimste mens ter wereld' (or in English 'the smartest man in the world'). Several newspapers and magazines reported on this, some displayed the photograph, others didn't. Now Lotti and his wife are suing several of these publishers for copyright infringement because they didn't have the permission to show this picture.

Everything so far seems more-or-less normal, except that one magazine (Story) was also sued even though it didn't publish the photograph (that link is in Dutch -- here is the Google translation), it only mentioned it. According to the lawyer for Lotti -- 'a mere reference to an image should be considered a reproduction of the image'!"

Filed Under: copyright, discussing, photos

Vanessa Hudgens Claims She Owns Copyright On Nude Photos Of Herself

from the lawyers-might-disagree dept

As we've discussed in the past, the subject of a photograph does not have any copyright claim on the image. The copyright is, instead, granted to whoever took the photo (amusingly, yes, this means that if you hand your little point-and-shoot to a random stranger to take you photo while on vacation, technically, that stranger owns the copyright on the photo). This is something that people often confuse -- as they assume that the subject has a copyright on the images. Copycense points us to the news that actress/singer Vanessa Hudgens isn't just suing some blogsite for posting nude photos of her, but is claiming copyright on the photos, saying she took them herself. I haven't seen the photos, so I'll rely on the claims at that link that the photos show her posing, with no indication that she is the one taking the photos. It is possible that the photos used a timer, I guess, but other reports have said that the photos were cameraphone photos, which usually don't have timers. As such, it certainly sounds like it might be a case of copyrfraud to falsely claim copyright on images where you do not, in fact, hold the copyright. That said, it's hard to be sympathetic to a site posting nude photos of someone who does not want them posted -- though, you have to admit that it's odd that these photos were registered with the US copyright office.

Filed Under: copyright, photos, vanessa hudgens

Is Everyone Who Received Monday's Metro Toronto Guilty Of Child Porn Possession?

from the certainly-seems-that-way dept

We were just talking about how current child porn laws that make you a criminal based on incidental possession alone can be quite problematic. Reader Jesse highlights an example of this. If you happen to have been in Toronto on Monday, and received a copy of Metro Toronto, a popular commuter paper, buried a few pages in was a "featured picture" of some kids celebrating at an annual parade by jumping around in a hot tub. The only problem? The male in the photo appears to be, well... having a wardrobe malfunction. Not unexpectedly, a bunch of sites were having some fun with this... until some realized that these were high school students. At that point, even Gawker -- who will post almost anything -- removed the photo realizing that under current laws, it was likely child pornography. Jesse points out that this would appear to make a bunch of people at the Metro, all the recipients of the paper on Monday, many people who visited blogs like Torontoist and Gawker while they had those photos displayed... potentially at risk for possessing child porn (and in the case of Metro employees and these blogs, for distributing it as well) -- making them all potential felons who could be required to sign up to be on sex offender lists for the rest of their lives. Isn't something wrong with the law when that happens?

Filed Under: accidents, photos, porn, possession, toronto

Facebook Photos Coming Back To Haunt Users In Surprising Ways

from the privacy-is-an-illusion? dept

There have been a bunch of stories lately about how pictures that people put up on Facebook are coming back to haunt them in unexpected ways. First, we have the case of Adam Bauer, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student who had been careful about who he friended, but chose to accept a friend request from an unknown user, because "she was a good-looking girl." Turns out that the "good-looking girl" was actually the La Crosse police, who ticketed him for underage drinking because of a photo on Facebook of Bauer holding a drink. This reminds me of a case we wrote about six years ago, involving a woman who posted some naked photos of herself at some locations around Lincoln, Nebraska -- leading the police to charge her with violating local no-nudity laws.

The other story that a bunch of folks have submitted was the case of a woman who who lost her disability insurance benefits because of photos on Facebook. She was on sick-leave due to a diagnosis of depression. Yet, somehow the insurance company got access to her Facebook photos that showed her out having fun -- at a birthday party, on vacation and the beach and at a Chippendale's show. Now it's entirely possible that there was insurance fraud going on. Or, it's also possible that someone who had been diagnosed with depression was trying to put her life back together. It's a bit difficult to think that an insurance agent looking at photos online is better at diagnosing the situation than a trained doctor.

In both of these cases, the issue is that photos might not tell the whole story. Making major decisions based just on some photos uploaded to social networks seems fraught with potential problems. I could certainly see using them as part of a larger investigation, but it doesn't seem like that was the case in either situation. But, in the meantime, it's a reminder that your privacy is increasingly disappearing -- and you may be surprised about decisions that others make about you based on what you assumed was perfectly innocent activities.

Filed Under: insurance, photos, police, social networks
Companies: facebook

Once Again, Walmart Stops People From Printing Family Photos Due To Copyright Law Claims

from the a-real-winner dept

It's been many years since we first wrote about how stores like Walmart were dealing with ridiculous copyright laws by telling employees to simply not allow the printing of "professional-looking" photos, just in case they were covered by someone else's copyright. Last year, a story popped up about a Walmart employee not letting a family print their own old family photos for this reason. It looks like we've got yet another such story. greenbird was the first of a few of you to send in this story about Walmart (yet again) not allowing the printing of family photos (this time for a funeral, which makes it that much more tragic), with copyright used as the reason. Once again, the employee made some dumb statements, such as saying "copyright is forever."

But, just like last time, I have to say that we shouldn't blame the Walmart employee, who is just trying to protect her job, and lives in a world where copyright maximalists constantly push this sort of message. It's not her fault, it's the fault of current copyright law, which makes such things seems reasonable, and the ongoing effort by lobbyists and politicians to only push copyright law further in that direction.

Filed Under: copyright, photos
Companies: walmart