Category: Legal / Copyright
News
PhotoShelter Partners with PicScout to track and monetize images online
PhotoShelter, an online storage and archiving business for photographers has announced that it has teamed up with PicScout, a technology company with offices in the U.S. and Israel best known for their Image Tracker and PicApp products, to automatically include PhotoShelter photographers’ images in the PicScout ImageIRC (index, registry and connection platform). As part of this partnership PhotoShelter photographers’ images will be identified by PicScout’s ImageExchange add-on which populates an (i) icon on images wherever they are used online providing valuable information to image users and a one click connection back to the PhotoShelter photographer’s e-commerce page to facilitate legitimate image sales.
News
Picapp integrates with Google Knol
Google announced this week it has added image search engine Picapp as an integrated partner to its Knol publishing site. Knol publishers will now have the ability to search within the Knol editor for images from Picapp’s Partner API and its more than 20 million images covering entertainment, sports, news, travel, fashion, medical, food, and more. “Implementing our Partner API with a strong partner such as Google, which stands for innovation and excellence and which is committed to reducing online image piracy, represents a major milestone for Picapp with its mission to bring legal, affordable images to online publishers,” said Eyal Gura, CEO, Picapp.
News
Creative Commons’ Joichi Ito joins Picscout
Joichi Ito, co-founder and Board member of Digital Garage and the CEO of Neoteny, has joined Picscout as an important member of its Advisory Board. Ito’s was excited to join the Israel-based image-tracking leader: “PicScout is bridging the interests of businesses and those of Internet users, supporting the hybrid sharing economy that is so crucial in getting past the destructive spiral that much of the online media business is in.” Ito has stated that he is pleased with Picscout’s adaptation of the work Creative Commons has contributed to the industry: “In addition, PicScout has agreed to interoperate with the open standards we are working on at Creative Commons.”
News
WIPO selects ‘Promoting Green Innovation’ theme for 2009 World Intellectual Property Day
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has announced the theme for its annual World Intellectual Property Day to be held on April 26 will be “promoting green innovation as a key element in meeting the challenges of climate change”. In his message to mark the day, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry highlights the contribution that a balanced intellectual property (IP) system can make in enabling the development of technology-based solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change.
News
German courts deal blow to Google stating Image Search Thumbnails violate copyright
Google Inc. (NSDQ: GOOG), the owner of the world’s most popular web search engine has recently lost two copyright lawsuits in Germany over the search engine’s rights to display photos and artwork as thumbnails in a preview of search results. The regional court of Hamburg has ruled that Google’s preview of a picture by German photographer Michael Bernhard violates his copyright. In a second case. Thomas Horn, who holds the copyrights on images of comics that were displayed, has also won a second case against Google according to an email by court spokeswoman Sabine Westphalen.
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants goes to Hollywood
I know what you’re feeling: the pain…the frustration…the sheer and total disappointment. No, I’m not referring to seeing Brett Favre in a uniform other than that of the Green Bay Packers (though lord knows that’s pretty bad, too). No, I refer, of course, to the distress many of us felt when it became obvious that Mr. Stock Smarty Pants would not be chosen as either party’s candidate for Vice President a few weeks ago. This, despite his many positive qualities that would be an asset to either ticket. You want smarts? Obviously, he’s got ‘em since that’s part of his name. Experience? Does a hefty number of divorces, jail terms and class-action suits count for something in this world? You bet it does! The ability to communicate with the electorate and mesmerize the unwashed masses in a manner that Barack Obama can only dream of?
News
Photographer Associations express concerns with Orphan Works bills S2913 and HR5889
For several years now the US Congress has been debating orphan works legislation which would allow publishers to use copyrighted works without a license in the event that it is difficult or impossible to identify and contact the copyright holder. As in recent years, organizations representing artists and copyright holders have made it clear that they cannot support this legislation in its current form. The Advertising Photographers of America (APA), the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), the Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) and Editorial Photographers (EP) on behalf of their members are urging congress to change Orphan Works bills S2913 and HR5889 as they bad for copyright holders and inconsistent with international trade agreements.
News
ACAP to adopt PLUS image licensing standards
ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol), a new global non-proprietary machine-readable protocol that enables publishers to control how their online content is re-used, has announced that it has adopted the PLUS (Picture Licensing Universal System) image licensing protocols. In a recent press release ACAP stated plans to use the PLUS License Data Format and PLUS Media Matrix standards to supplement the existing ACAP vocabulary for communicating license-related information in a machine-readable form to web crawlers and other automated devices that use web content. ACAP has previously concentrated on text-based web resources, and its adoption of PLUS semantics is part of a planned extension of ACAP to meet publisher requirements to communicate more precise terms for use of photographic and other media resources by web crawlers.
EditorialsFeatures
Innocent Thieves - Rohn Engh on “accidentally” free images online
Advance Notes: In the “for every action there’s a reaction” department, the Internet is showing us how new technology can backfire. And in the department of “It giveth and it taketh away,” unknowing copyright infringers are gobbling up “free” photos from the Internet for their personal and commercial use.
News
PACA honors Jane Kinne, photographers’ rights pioneer
The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) has named its Copyright Education Program in honor of Jane Kinne who dedicated her entire professional career – over 50 years – to the stock photo industry. By this gesture, PACA honors her memory in recognition of particular devotion she gave to the cause of photographers’ rights.
News
Alamy terminates contributor contract over model release issue
According to a posting on the company blog, Alamy has terminated the contract of a contributor for falsely stating that an image had a model release. Alamy claims that it acted after the agency was contacted by a a person who was the subject of an image marked as released but was confident he had never signed one. When asked to supply proof of the model release the contributing photographer admitted having not received a release but was maybe hoping to track the person down later.
News
RightsAgent launches platform to license, distribute, and monetize, user-generated content
RightsAgent, a new company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, has launched an online platform to allow users to license and monetize content including text, pictures, and videos. The company´s Internet-based free service allows users to consolidate the work they publish across the web into a unified feed, license their work with both Creative Commons and for-profit options, and build reputation based upon the value of the content they create.
News
News Brief: Nancy Wolff named Picture Professional of the Year 2007 by ASPP
We at abouttheimage send our best wishes and congratulations to Nancy Wolff, great friend to anyone in the photography business and an exceptional attorney, on the news that the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) has named her Picture Professional of the Year for 2007.
News
News Brief: Nancy Wolff to Speak at ASPP Midwest Chapter Meetings
On September 26 in Chicago and September 27 in Minneapolis, Nancy Wolff, legal counsel to the Picture Archive Council of America and an expert in copyright law, especially as it pertains to photography, will be the featured guest speaker at the Midwest chapter meetings of the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP.) Wolff will address the theme for the meetings, “Laying Down the Law: What Every Picture Professional Needs to Know.”
News
Masterfile wins $46,816.91 in internet copright infringement suit
In July 2007, the District Court of New York ruled in favor of Masterfile in its suit against J.V. Trading, a dealer in Asian food products whose promotional website displayed eight of Masterfile’s copyrighted photographs from 2002 to 2005, all without license. The court granted the full extent of damages requested, including statutory damages, attorney’s fees, and other costs incurred in prosecuting this action, for a total of $ 46,816.91. This result is an example of following an infringement claim, initially discovered through PicScout’s image recognition technology, all the way through to the end. The defendant refused to respond throughout the process, and placed the usual blame on the web designer, taking the tactic of “if we remove the images and don’t answer, you will give up and go away”. The next step is to collect the award, but even if full recovery was not achieved, the decision is an important example of how to pursue a copyright infringement claim where the defendant refuses to answer and defaults.
News
SAA releases comprehensive infringement study
The Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) a not-for-profit photographer advocacy organization, has released a comprehensive study of the issue of unauthorized or infringing use of stock images on the world-wide web. The study, which SAA performed in partnership with the usage tracking technology company, PicScout, examines and analyzes the results of tracking 20,000 rights managed images from Getty Images and Corbis for four months in 2005. The results show a startling rate of unauthorized use, both by inadvertent additional use to legally licensed rights and by simple theft of intellectual property.
News
PACA releases free PowerPoint on copyright education
The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) has placed on its web-site, a valuable resource to any creator or user of photography – a PowerPoint presentation that provides a thorough review of copyright law in the United States and how it applies to the use of imagery in advertising, the news media and fine art. The presentation includes real-world cases with images and detailed explanations of how the parties viewed the claimed infringements and how the courts assessed them.
News
PicScout now monitoring copyright in Australia
PicScout, a provider of internet tracking and monitoring solutions to the digital content industry, has announced that it will begin monitoring possible infringements in Australia. Until now the Israel based company has monitored North American and European markets for possible infringements on the internet reporting back to its content providers.
Features
Editorial: Virgin Mobile gets burned with Creative Commons photo from Flickr
It was bound to happen. The moment we old-timers in the stock photo industry have all been waiting for has finally arrived. A high profile client got burned by using down-market images that, it turns out, had no model releases. I and, I suspect, many colleagues got more than a little satisfaction out of the news.
News
US Copyright Office begins beta testing for online registration
The US Copyright Office has for several years been undergoing an extensive business process reengineering initiative in order to streamline its registration process and begin offering an online registration system. All of the efforts are beginning to bear fruit as the copyright office has begun the Beta test phase of the electronic Copyright Office (‘‘eCO’’) in July 2007 with two separate test groups comprising a total of 112 applicants. Participants in the Beta test have been selected based upon a set of criteria designed to identify individuals with a wide variety of claims. The initial phase of the Beta test will cover basic registration claims for literary works, visual arts works, performing arts works and sound recordings submitted electronically. At a later date, additional participants will be added to cover all options for submitting applications.
