Photographer wins $1.2M from companies that took pics off Twitter
reuters.com
reuters.com
But this is a sad day. I've been a professional photographer for over 10 years, and it makes me sick how paranoid others in the industry are.
Why is it OK to quote what someone said for a news article, but not use their photo with proper attribution? Because they spent a couple hundred dollars on a camera? Why is a picture some sacrosanct object but what someone says worthless? You're pressing a button on a camera and then pressing some buttons on a computer later.
The balance of power is completely wrong, and photographers, musical artists, and other "creatives" only shoot themselves in the foot by slathering watermarks, issuing crazy copyright notices, and using DRM on their photos/creative works.
If proper attribution is given to the creator (same as quoting what someone says) then photographs should be shared. Encouraging the sharing of photos I've taken for clients has only increased my business. It's better for society.
Also if you spoke to a reporter I suppose that would be an implied consent to have your words used.
I'm not taking sides with this comment, just pointing out the flaw in your argument.
Sharing images without attribution is the same as plagiarism. Should journalists that plagiarise words be fined a million dollars? I don't know, maybe. But it's the same issue.
EDIT: I'm not referring to law, only common sense and what actually happens in the real world.
Actually, you are. Talking about plagiarizing and being fined and trying to use legal arguments, and then content you aren't referring to the law?
> How is using someone else's image and giving them appropriate attribution any different than retweeting what they say?
By using Twitter, you give explicitly permission to retweet.
> Quoting them in a blog post?
If someone says something, you are free to quote them.
> If they post the image in a public forum (the internet) it's the same as words said in public.
No, it's not. It's explicitly not because the internet is not the same thing as a public forum.
> Should journalists that plagiarise words be fined a million dollars? I don't know, maybe.
It depends on to what degree the plagiarizing occurred. But you can't say maybe and follow it up with the edit that you did.
The difference is that you can copyright presentation, but you can't copyright an idea.
Once someone strings together enough words, however, you can't copy it either. That is, after all, why we don't photocopy novels when we want to read them.
> The balance of power is completely wrong...
Photographs and "news" reveal the weakness of using "expression" as a mechanism for judging whether copyright exists. If I email my next door neighbor and tell him "garbage pickup is on tuesday" and he emails the exact words to his neighbor, has he violated copyright, or is he reporting news? If I attach a photo of the garbage pickup schedule, have I violated copyright? If I attribute the schedule to the trash company am I compliant?
My point is that copyright is complex and imperfect, and finding the balance of power is very difficult.
Despite how it may appear in other comments I've made in this thread, I don't believe corporate entities are entitled to use a photographer's works for profit and without attribution.
This may seem contradictory, but that's because I have failed to make the proper distinction between sharing for personal use and using for profit.
As a professional photographer (and programmer), I can easily answer that: because they are professionals, and they want to get paid for THEIR pictures.
How about someone steals your business' source code (which you didn't release as FOSS)? Why shouldn't he? Because you spent a couple thousand dollars on a laptop? (if I'm allowed to to use your reasoning).
Not to mention: it's not just the camera: it's also their being were they need to take the pictures (which has costs), they risks they went through, years of training etc. And their particular expression (composition, etc).
If you think their pictures are not worth what they ask for, then don't use them. If you think they are worth it, pay for them. It's that simple.
>I've been a professional photographer for over 10 years, and it makes me sick how paranoid others in the industry are.
Well, if you're a wedding photographer, or a fine art photographer that makes his living from selling framed, signed and numbered prints, you don't qualify.
In the article we're talking about people that make their money from selling their pictures for print and online media and such (photojournalists). Though it also applies the same to stock photographers.
>The balance of power is completely wrong, and photographers, musical artists, and other "creatives"
If you want to take their stuff and listen to it or use it on the front page of your newspaper then they are clearly creative -- and the quotation marks around that word are not helping your comment.
>If proper attribution is given to the creator (same as quoting what someone says) then photographs should be shared.
Thanks for pissing all over my profession.
To answer your idea: people in general don't say things as a business to make money. That's why they are quoted for free. Were "quote" also means "a small part of what they said".
Those that do say things to get paid (e.g comedians, writers, journalists etc), don't get their words reprinted for free.
Not a proper analogy. You don't sell software because of source code, you sell it based on what users see. Sharing photographs (with proper attribution) is free marketing.
>[...] you don't qualify.
Why not? I'm paid to press a button on a camera. My product is the same as yours.
>Thanks for pissing all over my profession.
Why? Because I disagree with the prevailing view that photographs are sacred objects that should be locked in a vault available only to those who pay for them?
Yes, I get annoyed when I see my photos elsewhere used without permission/attribution. But have I lost money because of it? I've gained much more business by trying to see that my photos are seen by as many people as possible.
Your arguments are one in the same as the ones used by the RIAA and MPAA. A stolen MP3 or photograph is not a direct negative sale.
Photography is similar to music, so I'll quote from the article 'Why Most Artists Profit from Piracy':
>Several studies have shown that most artists actually profit from unauthorized sharing of files. They sell more albums because people have the opportunity to download songs and entire albums for free. A study by Blackburn (2004), a PhD student from Harvard, found that the 75% of the artist actually profit from piracy. Blackburn reports that the most popular artist (top 25%) sell less records. However, the remaining 75% of all artists actually profit from filesharing.
Source: http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/
it can be, but that's a pretty large blanket statement. first, it's not free. it costs me something when a photo is used without an exchange of payment for a license to use that photo.
but even playing devil's advocate: marketing doesn't pay our mortgage. publicity doesn't put food on the table for my family.
:)
It's an investment. You do it in hopes that current work will yield a larger future gain, be it through experience, wisdom, exposure, or something else.
and there is the distinction: you are choosing to contribute. when a photo of mine is used without my consent, approval or of my choosing to have it be used, it has been stolen.
And not all people want fucking "free marketing" (ie. let me use your stuff for free, devaluing it as a salable item, and conpensate with "exposure"). That's like the oldest slimmest trick in the book anyway, from people who don't want to pay: and it amounts to "You should be thanking US for using your work".
>>[...] you don't qualify. Why not? I'm paid to press a button on a camera. My product is the same as yours.
No, if you're on one of those cases describes, then your business model is different.
>Why? Because I disagree with the prevailing view that photographs are sacred objects that should be locked in a vault available only to those who pay for them?
That's not the definition of "sacred object". That's the definition of something you sell. And yes, a photograph can be something one sells. If you want to give your photographs for free, have a blast. Others wish to sell theirs for use should be respected from people wanting to use them.
>Yes, I get annoyed when I see my photos elsewhere used without permission/attribution. But have I lost money because of it? I've gained much more business by trying to see that my photos are seen by as many people as possible.
That's your choice and more power to you. I, and others, don't want and don't value business and "exposure" gained by such use. That should be my choice.
>Your arguments are one in the same as the ones used by the RIAA and MPAA.
So what? I don't disagree with all of their arguments. It's 2013. We don't only sell tables and cars, we also sell intagible objects like intellectual property. We've been doing it for centuries. Easy zero-cost copying doesn't mean you can't have an economy of intangibles.
I'm only against part of the current situation, like crazy long copyright times (should be way shorter), obvious patents (should only exist for non obvious inventions), etc.
>A stolen MP3 or photograph is not a direct negative sale.
Besides the point. I don't want unathorized use of my WORK, regardless of if it represents a lost sale or not.
>Blackburn reports that the most popular artist (top 25%) sell less records. However, the remaining 75% of all artists actually profit from filesharing.
Yay, a study published in Torrentfreak.
Now, you may chose to charge money for your photos, share them for free, or some mix of both, but the choice is ultimately yours. A news article may not appropriate your photo for their purposes without your permission and license unless it fits one of the fair use exceptions to copyright law.
I've been a professional photographer for close to the same amount of time you have. We own and regularly use approximately $50,000 worth of equipment, and the cost of that and our living has to be amortized over the amount we can realistically expect to sell in the lifespan of that equipment. I have absolutely no interest in someone else making money off my investment unless I get my cut. At no time has free work (e.g., magazines using photos with attribution) ever profited us either directly or indirectly. I'm not saying it couldn't ever, but in our experience, free or discounted begets more demands of the same.
Recently, they used one of our images on their page. They gave no credit, no links to our site, no compensation, or anything. They did, however, link the image to their Pinterest page, which in turn linked to their Tumblr. All giving the impression that they created the image, owned it, and had the right to use it.
A successful Facebook meme has significant monetary value. The 'response' of a good meme is predictable, and can easily reach hundreds of thousands of people. When they posted this image, it did very well. It got thousands of likes and shares. Of course, this happens every day, and not just to us. People steal images all the time. It seems to be "the Internet way."
It is easy to turn a blind eye to this. And usually, we don't mind. But when a direct competitor steals an image and uses it for their own gain, it really pisses me off. It also harms my business. Each time a Facebook image is posted, it loses some of its value. Once someone has "liked" it, they've already liked it, and are less likely to respond in the future.
But, that's just one small piece of the issue. The fact is this competitor has built their business on stealing other people's content, in order to build an audience for their Facebook page. They've become rather successful. We are more successful, but are fighting an uneven battle because of our unwillingness to steal.
My only question, now that they've stolen one of our images, is what to do next. My goal is to 'level the playing field', so that I don't have to compete against thieves. Perhaps a scary letter from a lawyer is in order? They're in South Africa, and I'm in the United States.
I have a feeling, though, that this simply isn't a fight that I can win. Respect for copyright is almost non-existent these days. Look at the rest of the posts on this discussion.
Sigh.
This is what irritates me so much about the majority of buzzfeed's articles
DMCA. I'm pretty sure this is probably against all these services TOS too and can probably get them banned from the services.
The short of it is that you retain copyright over your photos, but grant Twitter a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce them. You also authorize Twitter to extend that right to third parties via syndication agreements or APIs. This seems mostly intended to ensure that Twitter can set up APIs and feeds usable by third parties, although the permission as written would allow Twitter to engage in broader syndication agreements if they wanted.
But in any case, third parties can't just grab content and reuse it on their own. You could probably make some kind of photo-feed website scrolling recently tweeted photos, maybe even sort them into galleries (as long as your website complies with the Twitter API's own ToS). But you can't just right-click/save-as and upload the JPG to embed in your news article, because that removes it from the context where you're covered by the license the photographer has granted to Twitter.
We put an enormous amount of volunteer labour into tracking copyright violations and removing them: if a photographer complains that someone has uploaded a copyright violation, our volunteers will go and forensically examine EXIF data, look at upload metadata on sites like Flickr, check for digital watermarks, check on Google Images and other search tools to try and trace the upload history of the image. And even after all that work, it still feels like it's not quite good enough.
On image licensing, I've emailed government lawyers to verify that our interpretation of their national copyright policies is correct.
Meanwhile, I've worked with people in the commercial sector whose modus operandi for producing social media campaigns is "open up Google Images/Flickr/YouTube and pinch all the things!"
If I can trace the copyright claims on an image by using tools like Google Image Search, so can AFP and Getty. Not just for copyright purposes, but due diligence to make sure the metadata checks out with the photojournalistic claim made of the image. That they aren't doing so ought to give one pause before trusting agencies like AFP to report the news.
I'm a programmer and I say NOTHING is wrong with that!
We're not talking about stealing some CSS idea on some site...
This was irrelevant however since the judge found that Twitter's TOS only allows retweeting and personal use, so commercially using the image was a violation of the TOS. I'm not sure how a Twitter TOS violation turns into DMCA damages. I suppose the judge didn't want to get into policing all the LOL cats on the internet.
In one sense this has parallels to the clip art wars. Lots of vendors sold misappropriated clip art in their collections. Buying it in good faith is not protection for the end user.
It's not compulsory to state the copyright word. Also someone else using the photos is not a reason either. The company has to check the source of the images and ask for permission.
It didn't directly. The photographer retains copyright of photos, and sued the companies for regular copyright violation. One of the companies' defenses was to claim that they actually had a license, and therefore it was not a copyright violation. Users who tweet photos do grant certain royalty-free reproduction rights to both Twitter, and third-party syndicators authorized by Twitter. See section 5 here: https://twitter.com/tos. Therefore, if AFP were using the photos in accordance with terms authorized by Twitter, they would be covered by this license, and they wouldn't be violating the photographer's copyright.
The judge ruled that their reuse was not within the scope of these terms, however, and therefore not covered by that grant of a royalty-free license. Therefore the defense fails, and they're assessed damages, not for the Twitter ToS violation, but for reproducing photos without a valid license from the photographer.
The artificiality of shoehorning digital photography into the same rights framework as evolved for chemical photography creates these stresses. At least there ought to be different categories of images and rights.
(Just in case you aren't: no, it's emphatically not.)
That said, my understanding is that when you write something that's eligible for copyright protection, it is automatic: you don't need to say "Copyright" explicitly at all. It doesn't matter how you use the work in question (although the protections for "unpublished" work are stronger than for "published" work).
Now, it sounds like one element of this trial involved the license implicitly granted to Twitter by posting there. But the very fact that licensing was an issue demonstrates that copyright was in force here. (And the trial evidently concluded that Twitter's license is not tantamount to placing content into the public domain.)
You are conflating physical control of something with control of copyright.
The right to delete or modify content isn't the same as copyright. If you write a Wikipedia article, you own the copyright. You license the copyright with a non-exclusive, royalty-free license (Creative Commons) and you put it in a form that practically invites deletion and modification. But that deletion and modification doesn't change your ownership of the original copyright.
On a much simpler level, if I buy a current pop music album on CD, I have the right to "delete/modify" the content. I could put the CD through a wood chipper or drop it from a very high building or any number of other things. None of these would change the copyright status of the album.
> If you post a work on a public site, without explicit copyright, are you granted an implicit copyright?
No. You grant whatever copyright the terms and conditions say you grant. If there is no explicit grant, there is no implicit grant either.
(Or if the lawyers will take your case on a no-win-no-fee basis.)
But on the other hand, the legal tools being employed by David in this case are the same tools that Goliath uses to limit speech on the web today.
Let's not forget that the copyright system is an anachronism that needs to be dismantled/rebuilt to suit the modern world. Just because the result in this case leaves you satisfied doesn't mean that the system in its current form is unacceptable.