Copyright & Legal
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated copyright infringement claims by sports photographers against commercial users of their photographs, finding that the licenses that the photographers had granted to one of those users did not permit it to grant a sublicense to the other to use those photographs for free.
Spinelli, et al. v. National Football League, et al.,
Case No. 17-cv-0673 (2d Cir. Sept. 11, 2018) (Lynch, J).
The following is an update of information I have supplied previously about the Image Creator Locator concept. The previous stories can be found
here,
here,
here and
here.
Photographers trying to earn a portion of their living from the images they produce get very upset when they discover that someone has used one of their images without permission or compensation. But, pursuing and collecting from such users can be a very complex process and raise some difficult issues.
Creators take note. Are you a
“Copyright Troll?” For people in the tech industry and many Internet users this as a term of derision implying that the troll has no right to expect compensation for small uses of their copyrighted material. On the other hand, for those trying to earn a portion of their living creating the images that people need to promote their businesses and the services they offer, maybe this should be a badge of honor. Maybe you should be proud to be referred to as a
“Copyright Troll.”
Zhang Wei, CEO of
Imaginechina is appealing to other stock agencies, particularly editorial producers, to help stop massive photo copyright infringements by Baidu (Nasdaq BIDU). Imaginechina has recently won 38 lawsuits against Baidu over photo copyright infringements.
PicRights Europe GmbH, a global leader in copyright compliance, has added a new enforcement partner in Brazil to monetize copyright infringements for the world’s leading news agencies, stock image agencies and independent photographers. PicRights Brazil will augment PicRights’ long established network in major markets in Europe, North America and the Middle East.
Copytrack and
WENN Media Group (WMG) have announced their future exclusive collaboration. WMG specialized in providing up-to-the-minute entertainment news content with production based in Los Angeles, New York, London and Berlin. Copytrack will provide WMG with the tracking and worldwide legal enforcement of copyright infringement.
The Mega Agency has launched an innovative new service to fight widespread copyright infringement – Mega Image Police (MIP).
The company, a leading provider of news, sports and entertainment content, has beta launched an initiative to quickly identify stolen content and actively pursue damages on behalf of its growing global contributor base.
All photographers around the world who are trying to control and earn money from their work should watch, very carefully, what the European Parliament does with
Article 13 of its Copyright Directive. The final EU decision could greatly benefit all photographers whether they live in the EU or not. Tech industry leaders, like
Google and
YouTube, strongly oppose this legislation, because it could force them to use automated content filtering systems to insure that copyrighted material is not being distributed without permission on their platforms. The law states that digital companies should put "effective content recognition systems" in place.
On September 12th the European Parliament voted in favor of a Copyright Directive by more than 200 votes. The Directive will provide tools to ensure fair remuneration for creators. The landslide vote is clear evidence that the EU intends to apply some controls on the tech giants.
Imaginechina, has recently won 38 copyright infringement lawsuits against Nasdaq-listed Baidu Inc., the largest search engine and one of the biggest Internet companies in China. The Haidian People’s Court in Beijing adjudicates in the first-instance verdicts that Baidu and its affiliates have pirated a total of 150 images from 20 contracted photographers and that Baidu ought to compensate the plaintiffs RMB 415,000 yuan ($60,940) for the violations and the related costs.
ImageRights International Inc. has intensified its image search and copyright enforcement operations in Germany to drive value for its global photographer and photo agency client base. ImageRights-developed artificial intelligence (AI), combined with its proprietary web search and image analysis algorithms, has enabled the company to analyze millions of German web domains to determine if an image use could be pursued for copyright enforcement purposes.
SmartFrame has developed a revolutionary, patent-pending new image format for the internet that seeks to redefine and become the ubiquitous digital image standard. Having spent 5 years developing the technology and building the infrastructure to support exponential growth, SmartFrame is now seeing the technology being adopted by photographers, picture agencies, publishers and brands globally and is on target to having over 1 billion SmartFrames on the Internet in the next 4 years.
Photographers who think they can protect the images they post online by only uploading small files need to think again. Now with Topaz Labs $99
A.I. Gigapixel program anyone can re-size any images they find online, make it up to 600% larger than its original size and also improve sharpness. For more about how it works check out this
YouTube video.
Laura Annick asked some questions concerning my article about the
concept of an ICL. Here are her comments and my response. You're assuming that 100% of all creators will have uploaded their images and thus if a searcher cannot find an image, then it must be free to use. As you know there are TONS of independent filmmakers out there. It could take quite a long time to get EVERYONE to upload their images. I would rather see a notice saying "Image Not Found, Further Research Needed" or Use at Own Risk.
Sheron Resnick of 20/20 Software has sent a brief note with very cogent arguments as to why my ideas for an
Image Creator Locator are impractical and probably won’t work. In this story I would like to examine some of her concerns and criticisms and offer some thoughts on each of the issues mentioned.
The biggest problem for the stock photography industry today is that in order to make customers aware that photos exist they must be online. Once online, anyone can easily grab and use them.? If the image is on the photographer’s, or a stock agency site, most users would infer that they should contact the photographers or agency and ask permission. But, more often than not, the picture is seen on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or some other site. No one, just looking at the image is sure whether it can be legally used or not. And if it should be licensed where to go to do that.
The legal definition of “Fair Use” is open to a lot of interpretation by courts. in
Brammer v. Violent Hues Productions, LLC, a Northern District of Virginia court recently found in favor of Fair Use. If this decision becomes legal precedent then photographers should assume that if one of their images can be found on the Internet, or anywhere else, anyone can use it for free.
A controversial bill in the EU seeking a rewrite of Europe’s copyright laws giving creators more power to restrict how their content is distributed has been rejected by lawmakers. The vote was 318 against the legislation, known as The Copyright Directive, while 278 voted in favor, and 31 abstained, taking the reforms back to the drawing board.
Lohian Networks a keywording agency in India reports that Paris based
Photononstop has not been paying its bills and may be in financial difficulty.
Rashi Jain, Project Coordinator for Lohian Networks reports that in 2016 his company keyworded 3788 images for Photononstop at a rate of $1.25 per image for a total cost of
$4,735.00. Invoices were sent in June and July 2016 via Photosindia in the U.S. Almost two years later these invoices have not been paid after repeated followup requests.
Olycom, a major Italian photographic agency headquartered in Milan and founded in 1958 by Walfrido Chiarini as Olimpia Fotocronache has filed for bankruptcy. Everything regarding debts is in the hands of a judge. LaPresse, the Italian multimedia news agency led by Marco Durante, has acquired the analog and digital libraries of Olycom including the Publifoto brand, the historical archives Olimpia and Olycom and related brands covering the whole of the twentieth century, with a collection of over 15 million images.
Last week, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs approved amendments to the
EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Among the amendments approved was Article 13.
Scope Features in the UK has gone into voluntary liquidation with nearly £400,000 in unpaid debts and nearly £13,000 in royalties still owed photographers. According to its
statement of affairs filed at Companies House on 17 May, individual photographers are owed sums ranging from £30 to more than £2,000.
The U.S. Copyright Office is proposing changes to fees for copyright registration. The Office has issued a statement outlining the proposed changes in detail, but on average, fees will increase by as much as 41%. According to
the statement, the Office analyzed potential changes to fees and wants to ensure that they are “fair and equitable and give due consideration to the objectives of the copyright system,” as required by the statute.
Back in 2016 Tony and Chelsea Northrup discovered that their image, originally published on the cover of their
Adobe Lightroom 6/CC for Photographers book, had been used by an Australian company on the packaging of a smartphone case, and the product sold in Australia and New Zealand without their permission.