Posts Tagged 'copyright'

How To Credit

Source: Design Sponge (via A Photo Editor)

Is Lady Gaga A Copyright Bully?

Normally I’m all for multi-millionaire celebrities trying to protect what’s rightfully theirs, except in the case when it’s not theirs.

In a move that signals crushing amounts of hubris, Lady Gaga is demanding that photographers sign over the copyright to images taken at her concerts so that she owns them all.

Rolling Stone writes: “This an especially bold demand as the government has established that copyright exists the moment when a work is created, which in this case is the moment when a photographer clicks their shutter button.”

If this is attempt to control her image, it seems totally futile considering everyone has a cell phone camera these days. If it’s an effort to make more money, well, she made $64 million last year and was on the Forbes list as the fourth richest woman in Hollywood, so that’s just greedy.

As concert photographer and intellectual property lawyer David Atlas told Rolling Stone:

“Typically the person who has the least leverage gets the worst release,” Atlas says. “Maybe there’s a photographer that she likes who won’t have to sign the release form, but the people who get paid $125 to hang out for four hours at a concert have to sign this release. So on top of getting paid very little, they have no ongoing revenue stream from these photos whatsoever.”

Photography & the Law: 10 Misconceptions

The law is complicated, and  if you’re not a lawyer and haven’t spent hundreds of hours pouring over legal cases and texts, it’s easy to get caught up in second-hand internet advice and half-truths about what’s legal and what’s not. So it’s helpful when a lawyer breaks it down for for you, as attorney Carolyn Wright does in this post on the WPPI site (which is for wedding photographers, but the information is universally helpful), “Top 10 Misconceptions About Photography and the Law.”

Wright goes over things like photographing copyrighted art in public, fair use, property releases, copyright protection and your employer’s rights to your photographic work — it’s worth a read.

Source: WPPI (via A Photo Editor)

Photographer Wants His Fair Share

By pointing this out, we will in effect be further annoying one Portland photographer, but here goes anyway. Rick Adams whipped out his camera just as a local cyclist jumped on the hood of a car to avoid being hit during a road rage incident. The story was widely picked up by every media outlet in town, and his footage was aired over and over again. Adams says he willingly gave the footage over to the the police with the intent of helping the cyclist, but he didn’t realize all these outlets would so flagrantly ignore his copyright ownership.

Now he’s annoyed and is willing to go to court to protect his rights. “I’m not looking to get rich off this, but as long as other people are making money off it, I think it’s only fair I should get some,” he said. (He did say he’s been contacted by some national news outlets which have been open to compensating him for the footage.)

Incidentally, there was a pretty horrific road rage incident in Los Angeles recently where two cyclists ended up in the hospital with serious injuries. Is this the latest trend? Stay tuned for the inevitable Primetime and/or Today Show story soon.

Article from The Portland Tribune.



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