StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

The Richter Scales video "Here Comes Another Bubble": New Version 1.1 without Lane Hartwell´s photograph

 

 

New statement from The Richter Scales and a fresh reaction from Lane Hartwell below:

Teen Photographer Lara Jade Sues Pornographers TVX Films Over Unauthorized Image Use

What a sad and bizarre story (compiled):

Lara Jade Coton is an 18 year old photographer and college student who resides in England. Her work has been featured in a range of magazines and e-zines. She took up photography at the age of 14 and also works in photo manipulation and digital art. She discovered that an innocent self-portrait, taken when she was 14 years old, was obtained off the Internet and used without permission as the DVD cover and face art for the sexually explicit movie "Body Magic", produced by TVX Films. [...]

Sion Touhig On Copyright, Photographers´ Race To The Bottom, Media Corporations And Audience Stolen Content

Published on The Register´s website yesterday, photojournalist Sion Touhig (1999 News Photographer of the Year and featured in Life/Time Magazine's "Pictures of the Year" for four years) is out with a three-page article on "How the anti-copyright lobby makes big business richer", followed later by a discussion on his blog.

Sion´s basic reasoning is that:

• Citizen Journalism - one trend which would appear to suggest more "democracy" in the media - but actually doesn't - is a "smokescreen for grabbing content" (Sion´s blog) and "should be more accurately termed Audience Stolen Content"
• "Copyright is already dead"
• "Weakening investigative journalism has far more profound implications for democracy" (quoting the NY Review of Books)

Gossip Gangsta Blogger Perez Hilton Vs. Celebrity Photo Agency X17: IP Attorney Notes "Impossible To Tell Who Would Prevail"

The LA Times (Robin Abcarian/Jessica Garrison) is out with a long two-page report on "Perez Hilton takes their best shots: The gossip blogger's use of an agency's paparazzi photos puts the legal spotlight on copyright infringement".

For people in the stock photo industry, the article starts with the surprising sentence: "It's hard to know whom to sympathize with in this fight".

 

Celebrity Photo Agency X17 Sues Celebrity Blogger Perez Hilton, Claims $7.5 Million In Damages, WENN, INF, Splash News, Ramey, Bauer Griffin, Most Wanted, Flynet Follow

Fred Voetsch of Acclaim Images recently gained very questionable immortality with the unforgettable phrase "Getting into Alamy is like getting into Paris Hilton, it's just not that difficult, though it can be fun and even quite profitable" (Fred added yesterday "I stand behind everything I wrote").

It is unknown so far if Paris Hilton has already contacted her lawyer. In a related matter, the "popular" celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, with "2.5 million unique visitors each day on his website, listed by the UK issue of GQ in their Man of the Year issue, called by the New York Post one of the 25 most powerful Latinos" and whose real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira, needs to talk to his attorney very soon.

Some Just Don´t Get It: Paris Hilton, Perez Hilton, Who Cares?

Canada.com:

Splash News is the latest celebrity photo agency to go after blogger Perez Hilton [Wikipedia entry] for posting photos without permission. Hilton, whose real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira, was served with a cease and desist order on Tuesday while sitting in The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf café, where he regularly works on his popular blog.

In a letter drafted by L.A. law firm Makarem & Associates, Hilton was ordered to remove exclusive photos of Britney Spears holding her baby Jayden James, taken in Louisiana by Splash snappers Aaron St-Clair and Steve Dennett.

Corbis, Getty Images And Slavish Copies

Yesterday Royce Bair, the founder of The Stock Solution photo agency, started a discussion about "Promoting stock photography via Creative Commons?" at the Stockphoto.net discussion group, asking the community

All in all, Creative Commons has a nice idea, but do you think it is really useful for the professional stock photographer who wants to promote his/her images?

Grab, Copy, Steal: How To Do Stock Photo Business

Yet another interesting post from the StockPhoto email group. Andy Wee recently here:

Hi guys, I know it's kinda sort of the wrong forum to post this. But I had this coming to me from a client. A few huge advertising agencies have done this to me. They just grab web samples of RM images that works for their mock-up. And they showed it to me. I was asked to replicate the shots. Not just a few, but quite a lot. They had asked me to reproduce up to 95% of the web sample.

Getty Images Tightening The Partnership With Picscout

Getty Images and PicScout are extending the partnership to a long-term contract, where PicScout shall become the exclusive visual search provider for detecting infringements of Getty Images collections on the Internet and in over 2,000 magazines throughout Europe and North America.

More here.

Getty And Corbis Win: E-Data Patent Invalid

Finally E-Data has lost the "Freeny download patent"-battle :

Photo-licensing company Getty Images Inc. and competitor Corbis Corp. won a court ruling that they aren't infringing a European patent by allowing customers to download digital images. [...] Koos Rasser, a lawyer for Port Washington, N.Y.-based E-Data, said it wouldn't appeal the decision. ("Seattle Post: Getty and Corbis win image patent dispute")

See also the Financial Times, "Judge declares Freeny download patent invalid" and InternetNews, "Court Tosses Patent Case Against Corbis, Getty":

E-Data first sued Getty and Corbis, two digital stock photography providers that let users browse, license and download images online, in Europe in February 2004. It piled on the U.S. suit in May of that year.
Although the two suits were filed against the individual companies, they soon buddied up to present a united front against E-Data's claims. In London, the cases were joined for trial. E-Data's U.S. case against Corbis hasn't been resolved. [...]
Corbis and Getty also asked the courts to rule on the validity of the patent. In the UK, the judge invalidated the patent, leaving E-Data's licensing push in the lurch. E-Data executives weren't available for comment.
While the Freeny patent expired in the United States in 2003 and was set to expire in the EU in 2005, both countries' laws allow companies to sue for back damages, and E-Data had planned to do so.

Similar in "Court rules against E-Data in 'Freeny' patent case" (The Register). Among others, Apple had been willing to pay an undisclosed amount of royalties in August 2004 for the iTunes Music Store.
Here´s the link to the site "E-Data Facts" by Getty Images.