- Driving through town of Tenaha, Texas? Might be better to get accosted by the robbers and not the cops [San Antonio Express-News via Balko, Hit and Run]
- Location-tracking Google Latitude application could pose liability problems for unwary employers [PoL]
- EMTALA law obliges hospital ERs to treat many patients. OK, so how about ELRALA next, for lawyers? [White Coat Rants]
- New Jersey judge dismisses defamation suit by three women whose picture appeared in book “Hot Chicks with D-Bags” [Smoking Gun, earlier here and, relatedly, here] More: Taranto, WSJ “Best of the Web”, scroll.
- Myrhvold, often assailed as patent troll, sponsors quote/unquote neutral Stanford study of patent litigation [MarketWatch]
- Some thoughts on much-publicized tussle between Associated Press and Shepard Fairey over Obamacon photo [Plagiarism Today]
- Creative uses of immigration law: get that little homewrecker deported [Obscure Store]
- More than a few real estate lawyers were “hip-deep in mortgage fraud”. Will they tiptoe away? [Scott Greenfield]
- Roundup on the awful Employee Free Choice Act [PoL]
Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Annals of overlooked photo permissions
Uh-oh: it appears the most famous American political artwork to come along in decades, Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster, was made without notice to or permission from the photographer who snapped the original image on which it was based. (Prawfsblawg, A Photo Editor).
Cavorter’s remorse, cont’d: topless mermaid suit case
Spot the antecedent of “her” in this lead paragraph from SixShot.com:
A New York judge yesterday (September 22) dismissed a lawsuit filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Vibe Magazine over a picture that showed her topless at a party hosted by the Bad Boy mogul.
It reads as if “her” would have to refer to “judge”, but not so: it was hedge fund manager Maria Kristina Dominguez who sued the magazine and music celebrity. The judge threw out her suit, ruling that the “photo was related to newsworthy issues of public interest and Dominguez had no right of privacy while cavorting topless”. More on flasher’s remorse here, etc.
Update: Taster’s Choice guy suit
Kevin Underhill at Lowering the Bar, a law/humor blog, has amusing live coverage (Oct. 27) of the appeal in a California court of Christoff v. Nestle USA, the $15.6 million award for using a model’s photo on a coffee label without ensuring that the proper permissions were in place (see Feb. 2, 2005).
“The Hidden Cost of Documentaries”
Why can’t you get a DVD of “Eyes on the Prize,” which Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the department of African and African-American studies at Harvard, called “the most sophisticated and most poignant documentary of African-American history ever made”? Because there are 272 still photographs, scenes from eighty archives, and music—and if a single set of rights expire, fear of copyright litigation prevents the entire movie from being shown or distributed. “Today, anyone armed with a video camera and movie-editing software can make a documentary. But can everyone afford to make it legally?” (Nancy Ramsey, New York Times, Oct. 16). American University professors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi issue an extensive report describing the problem, but draw back from the obvious solution of liability reform, and thus make their recommendations toothless. “Educating gatekeepers about creators’ use rights” will have absolutely no effect so long as it will cost a documentary filmmaker less to pay for rights than to successfully defend a lawsuit against a rights-holder.
Comedian David Cross is learning this: he’s been sued by a nightclub owner who claims that Cross didn’t have permission to record him. Sub Pop Records, which distributed the Cross CD, claims that the permissions were granted.
See also Oct. 10 and links therein.
Untraceable — but still under copyright
Due in part to expansions of copyright law lobbied for by Disney and other giants, a huge volume of writing, art and music which would otherwise by now have entered the public domain is still under copyright, even though the rights to much of it — things like picture postcards, ephemeral commercial illustration and sheet music issued by long-defunct publishers or with no identifying marks at all — cannot be traced to any particular current successor-owner even by good faith efforts. Per Wired News:
According to comments submitted to the copyright office, one married couple couldn’t get a wedding photograph repaired: The photography shop would not scan and reprint the photo because it was taken by a professional and the shop was afraid of violating copyright, even though the photographer was out of business.
“For heaven’s sake, this is a photograph of me and my wife, and I can’t have it legally repaired!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong!” wrote William Haynes.
(Katie Dean, “Copyright Reform to Free Orphans?”, Apr. 12).
Lack of proper photo permission: $15.6 million
In 1986 California model Russell Christoff was paid a modest sum for doing a photo shoot with a photographer working for Nestlé but assumed nothing had come of it. Years later, Christoff happened to glance at a jar of the company’s Taster’s Choice instant coffee and realized that the tiny “satisfied coffee drinker” face on its label was his, it having appeared there for years. And now a jury in Glendale, outside Los Angeles, has ordered the Swiss-based food company to pay Christoff $15.6 million for using his picture without adequate permission. “The jurors determined that Glendale-based Nestle should have paid Christoff $330,000 for the use of his likeness. They also voted to hand Christoff damages equal to 5% of the profit from Taster’s Choice sales during the six-year period, or $15.3 million,” invoking a California law intended to protect celebrities’ image. A company lawyer says the employee who pulled the photo for use thought the requisite permissions had been obtained on it. So now if you notice Legal being really, really prickly about signing off on any proposed use of photos picturing people, you’ll know why. (Meg James, “Verdict Creates Instant Millionaire”, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1; James Bone, “The tiny face on this jar of coffee has just cost Nestlé 15m”, The Times (UK), Feb. 2).
“Judge Says Artist Can Make Fun of Barbie”
Merits of loser-pays: Five years ago, the Mattel toy company sued artist/photographer Tom Forsythe for copyright and trademark infringement over “a series of 78 photographic images of the wildly famous doll showing her nude, and sometimes posed provocatively, in or around various household appliances. … After a lengthy legal tussle, which included a series of appeals, a federal judge late last week instructed Mattel to pay Mr. Forsythe legal fees of more than $1.8 million.” (Bill Werde, New York Times, Jun. 28).