This seems to be a cash grab.
Note this same guy re-created the album cover only 5 years ago. He didn't seem to have much of a problem at that time.
Note this same guy re-created the album cover only 5 years ago. He didn't seem to have much of a problem at that time.
Quotes from that interview:
Q: "What's it like knowing all these people have seen you naked?"
A: "What's it like knowing all these people have seen my baby penis? When I was a baby? Well, I'm not really a baby anymore, so I have to think it's not me or something. But it's a trip that a lot of people have seen my baby penis, as a baby. I went to a baseball game at the Dodgers, and I had a moment where I was looking out and thinking 'All these people have seen my baby penis, when I was a baby'. It's pretty... pretty crazy. It'd be nice to have a quarter for all the people who have seen my baby penis. But, you know, there's all kinds of puns you could throw on that. But... you know... maybe it doesn't matter though, it's cool to be a part of that recipe for success. Makes you think you could do it again. That might not happy, but it's a pretty big thing, to be a part of, low key, but it definitely trips you out. But then I try not to think about it, because it's not that big of a deal, there's a lot of things going on that are more important."
I mean, it goes on, but to me that reads as someone struggling to come to terms with something that happened to them when they couldn't consent. Most people would not be okay with having their naked image broadcast to the world before they could consent. And then add in the idea that others made a ton of money off content that used their naked image, and they saw almost none of that... it's understandable.
1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity
2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot
Also, the way I read the articles, I don't believe he reached out for those recreations - the media reached out to him.
2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image.
Edit: Also, it's not like it was hidden that it was him on the album cover. Anyone who wanted to know who the baby was could easily find out it was him. It's in the wikipedia, and I imagine it was probably credited in the Album credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork
That's probably how the media tracked him down for recreations.
Were the parents (or whomever consented) not compensated?
Just because the parents made a morally questionable choice to consent on behalf of their child doesn't absolve the record label of also making the morally questionable choice of distributing and profiting from the naked image of a child who couldn't consent for themselves.
i really don't see what the moral question is. they wanted a photo of a newborn swimming, they bought the photo of a newborn swimming
But a newborn can't. A 2 year old can't. A four year old can't. The line of when a kid can understand what they're consenting to gets blurry from there. And we probably just need much more nuanced consent laws rather than a blanket "You can legally consent at 18, and your parents can consent for you before that."
There are certain things we need to let parents consent to - like medical care. But we don't need to let parents consent to the use of their kids image in media. We don't need to allow parents to sell their kids.
And I don't think "Well, they can't consent and if we give them consent we can't do this class of thing" is a good enough reason to deny them the ability to consent.
So we can't use naked pictures of kids who can't consent in media, or pictures at all. So what? Voluntary consent is important. If respecting voluntary consent means there are things we can't do - then there are things we can't do.
To be clear, consent relates to things like, well, album covers and other types of commercial photography such as marketing and advertising. There's no consent needed for editorial (e.g. news) photography.
This also wouldn't even be a discussion if this were some obscure art photography. It just happens to be on an iconic album cover.
How far are you willing to push that?
Should I need to destroy photos that accidentally capture an infant in public?
Should children not get vaccine shots until they can meaningfully consent?
Relief in the courts would require a completely new body of common law. In the mean time, legislation would be the only way to provide compensation to victims of un-consented childhood photography.
What specific ideas do you have for laws that could start to provide this relief?
Just because parents consent doesn't mean that parents are looking out for their children or understand what the effects of fame as a young child will be.
I don't have cut and dried answers here, but I don't think you can pretend that there aren't ethical concerns with media protrayal of young children that need atleast some consideration.
Edit: Personally, I think that if a photograph of a naked baby was important to this piece of art, the ethical solution would have been to keep the baby's identity anonymous (at least until he was 18). That would have done a lot to balance the ethics here, especially as the identity of the baby shouldn't matter.
As an honest question, I'm curious whether the "naked" part makes this worse in your opinion. I, personally, don't feel any shame about my body at that age -- too young for me to even remember -- being seen. (As opposed to a nude photo of me now being distributed without my approval.)
To me it seems like the nakedness is irrelevant -- if it was a violation of consent to use his baby image, then clothes don't negate the violation.
Although, that said, those pictures have never surfaced. My feelings about them might change if a coworker pulled them up unexpectedly one day and started giving me shit for it.
Whatever our individual feelings about nudity - or how it should be perceived in society (and I agree, it should not be shameful or automatically sexualized the way it is) our society does view nudity a certain way. And people are allowed to feel about they feel about that. If it makes it worse for him, and it sure seems to, then that's something we have to respect. Even if we wish it were otherwise.
My main thing is voluntary consent. He couldn't. He should have been able to. I don't think parents should have the right to effectively sell their kids before they can consent. If that means we don't can't use kids younger than a certain age in modeling and marketing, so be it.
Another example: the instructions for my pediatric otoscope used photos of an infant, showing proper placement. This is a commercial use.
Do you propose that all of these photos should be made illegal?
EDIT: And what about movies? Should we ban infants and small children from film as well?
The record label profited off the music, not the image. The image on its own means nothing without the music.
He was a baby.
What kind of splitting hair intellectual rhetoric are we people getting into?
All of my uncles, aunts, neighbours, neighbours at the cottage, babysitters, people at the park saw me to some extent 'naked' at the park. Little girls considerably more often since they go topless.
It's the most normal thing on the planet and it's been that way for thousands of years for everyone.
I'm hoping is just an odd HN style discussion and not some kind of weird new social normalization that's happened very quickly, in one generation as an artifact of ultra urbane helicopter parenting.
This is not a debate: his parents will have, or not, consented to him being in a bit of commercial artwork. His being naked as baby is irrelevant. That's it.
> Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a baby on the album cover for Nirvana's Nevermind, is suing the band alleging sexual exploitation.
The article goes on:
> He also alleges the nude image constitutes child pornography.
> However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker".
It amazes me just how many HN users just say stuff without reading anything. The person being replied to also doesn't deserve the downvotes; it's an entirely valid point that the general population is likely to agree with. (not saying you downvoted in particular... I just find it baffling.)
The 'barely born baby, into the world chasing the dollar on the devil's rod' ... has come to life in the 'baby adult demanding money for something he's probably not owed, making hyperbolic claims of 'child porn'.
I think if he were not naked, he would have a much harder time with the 'sex crime' hyperbole.
Nudity isn't porn.
This is why recently I've been loving watching old videos of people living their everyday lives before technology oversocialized us.
Here's a recent one that I happened to find because I was researching the Boston accent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVFxtbZoyw
These days you'd think all these people were just actors in some 80's movie, but they were real people all walking up to each other and interacting organically. Nobody is staring down at phones, everyone is socially confident, kids are out playing, adults show affection towards the children, and so on. Some may disapprove of the lifestyle of these urban Boston Italians or certain things they say, but it's one reflection of a different time that really wasn't that long ago. This was before mainstream media scared the shit out of people and convinced them that the world is too dangerous, before people overexposed themselves on social media, before video games addicted children, before adults spent more time with their devices than with their families. Things weren't perfect in the old days by any means, but there were some good things about humanity that we've gradually suppressed in ourselves which we've been losing in a short period of time.
Like you, I grew up with a big family where the little ones were sometimes seen naked whether it was when we were running around in the dirt or taking baths together. By a certain age, our parents knew when to start having us to always wear clothes and bathe by ourselves. But there's what I would consider a precious window of innocence in young childhood where kids can exist and be themselves, clothed or not, free of the knowledge of sexuality. My sibling and cousins all were naked at one point or another as young kids and nobody feels scarred or exploited because our elders saw us naked in some vague memory.
It's quite normal for people to be embarrassed when their parents show baby pictures, especially if it involves nudity. It's transplanting the childish innocence onto the person's social present.
His parent's consent does not negate the harm done, possibly the opposite.
Did they? Seriously - would this album have sold a single fewer copies if the cover had been a picture of a duck, or a floating Pom-Pom, or any of a million other things?
To claim they profited from the photo, you’d have to prove that people bought one of the most popular albums of all time because this dudes baby parts were on the cover.
It was a thing that happened to him as a baby, and it sounds like he's had conflicted feelings about it. It doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for not acting in just the perfect way for his whole life to minimize the effects on him.
> 2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot
It's not an either or thing. It's totally legitimate to blame all the parties involved.
However, of all the parties involved, his parents were likely the most ignorant of what this photo would become. From the OP:
> In 2008, Spencer's father Rick recounted the photo shoot to US radio network NPR, saying he had been offered $200 to take part by Weddle [the photographer], who was a family friend.
> "We just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!"
> The family quickly forgot the photoshoot until, three months later, they saw the Nevermind album cover blown up on the wall of Tower Records in Los Angeles.
I kind of hesitate to use terms like this, but the intent of your comment seems to be to deflect blame towards the least responsible parties, which seems like a kind of victim blaming.
Poor bastard.
As soon as the child pornography argument falls flat on its face (assuming the prosecution is actually that boneheaded), the defense may argue that the magnitude of possible harm is very different considering how the body, mind, and memory of an infant hardly recognizable to their adult counterpart and that there is no sort of humiliating aspect to the album art that would cause the public to view the adult Elden in any negative way.
It's not as if Elden doesn't have some point to make. It's bad that he hasn't been compensated for being pictures on one of the most iconic albums ever made. But unless there's something revealed in trial that I don't know, it doesn't appear that the record company or the band did anything wrong. It all hinges on whether there was sexual child exploitation, and although some people on HN seem to believe that the image of the naked body of an infant is inherently sexual in nature (which is creepy to me, but what do I know), I highly doubt that a judge, jury, or regular people are going to buy that argument.
Given the easy availability of newborn babies, I think $200 is fair.
beautiful
We put giant photos of ourselves as babies, often naked, on sticks and wave around when we graduate. I have never heard anyone even hint at that being an issue.
And for the record, breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world.
Sounds like the only issue he has with it is that HE didn't get any of the money.
> It's not the first time Spencer has been asked to recreate the image - he has posed three times before for the album's 10th, 17th and 20th anniversaries.
> "I said to the photographer, 'Let's do it naked.' But he thought that would be weird, so I wore my swim shorts," Spencer told the New York Post.
And then... this article. Smells like a money grab to me as well.
I see what you did, there.
That's exactly what the picture is of - the allure of capitalism hooking you right from the start.
If his parents didn’t sign a release then there is a claim. It doesn't matter if the subject felt good about it for some time. Actually, in your mind, how is that related? Its hard for me to relate so can you elaborate?
The additional claim of it being child pornography is not strong and is to get them to settle faster. Although he says there was an agreement about covering the genitals that seems broken, if there is no document that will be the only tricky part about the case (just in general contractual stipulations), but does also bolster the settlement claim.
Elden himself hardly matters to this... a judge ordering the label to set $100 million on fire (or make a non-deductible charitable donation) would have the same effect.
I don’t see a legal quandary at all and, unless you think all minors’ likenesses should not be able to appear in commercial material, I don’t see a moral or ethical quandary. Plaintiff’s destination for their complaint is with their parents, IMO.
Same as if adult Mikey objected to being associated with Life cereal or adult Macauley Culkin objected to being in Home Alone.
Edit to add: > Elden says his parents never signed a release authorising the use of his image on the album.
Iff that claim is true (which should be a relatively straightforward finding of fact) and that fact means that the label didn’t have the rights to use the likeness [the claim doesn’t rely on a technicality of the word “release”, but where the label has a license to use], then I’d say he’s got a case.
I don’t see naked as equaling sexualized and I don’t see the Nirvana cover as the latter either, but I definitely can’t see a total ban on pictures in commercially-sold material being workable.
If its just that you think a naked baby is pornographic then I guess its an entirely different conversation. Its not really clear what motivates your statement here though.
Although likeness is regulated only at the state level, and is the only aspect of this lawsuit, copyright is regulated at the federal level and is the basis for the commercial licenses to exist at all - if this actually was child pornography which requires a category of something considered obscenity, it would be ineligible for copyright which would mean the existing licensors would have no reason to pay for the license at all, and there would be no value to give for the likeness settlement.
The rest is your feelings and that is not relevant here.
Its not a moral quandary it is a contractual quandary which the lawsuit accurately details.
If his parents didn't sign the likeness then anyone using the image has a liability issue. It doesnt matter if its the photographer, Nirvana, the record label, etc
Yes, your edit covers it and I would also say he has a case. Spoonjim has been correct the whole time. Somehow that opinion isnt seen as popular right now but the accuracy is not in question.
Ehh, that seems like pretty shaky logic. I think it's pretty safe to say that lots of people would be bothered by naked pictures of themselves being posted publicly for all to see, even if they can't be identified by the pictures.
That's not to say he's going to win, but I think you're simplifying things a bit too much.
The power in this case is damages which can be collected due to the ongoing commercial use.