Photographer Still Insisting He Holds Copyright On Photo By A Monkey, Hints At Possibly Suing Wikimedia

from the test-cases dept

Three years ago, we wrote about the bizarre case of a monkey who apparently grabbed a photographer’s camera in a national park in Indonesia and snapped a selfie (that was back before “selfie” was so common a term — and we just called it a “self-portrait”). There were a few different shots, but the one that clearly got the most attention is this one:

As we noted when we wrote about it, it seems fairly clear that the work is in the public domain. We were idly curious about how a news licensing agency (Caters New Agency) could claim the rights to the photograph. A few days later Caters itself demanded that we take down the photo, claiming that the copyright was held by the owner of the camera, David Slater. Slater himself insisted the copyright was his. However, as we explained in fairly great detail, looking at the laws of the US, the UK (where Slater is from) and Indonesia (where the picture was taken) the image is almost certainly in the public domain, no matter how you look at it.

Under all three laws, the rules say that the work needs to be done by a person, and a monkey doesn’t count. Slater, however, claims that because the camera is his, it’s still his copyright. While that’s what many people think copyright law says, it’s not actually what copyright law says at all.

The latest is that Slater is apparently still considering legal action against Wikimedia for refusing to take down the image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Gloucestershire-based photographer now claims that the decision is jeopardising his income as anyone can take the image and publish it for free, without having to pay him a royalty. He complained To Wikimedia that he owned the copyright of the image, but a recent transparency report from the group, which details all the removal requests it has received, reveals that editors decided that the monkey itself actually owned the copyright because it was the one that pressed the shutter button.

Mr Slater now faces an estimated £10,000 legal bill to take the matter to court.

First, I should note that if someone thinks the monkey holds the copyright, that’s incorrect as well. While it’s true that, in most cases, the person who takes the pictures gets the copyright, as noted above, the laws say it needs to be a person, so monkeys don’t count. The image is public domain. The “monkey holds the copyright” claim appears to be a mistake by the author of the Telegraph piece. The guy who uploaded it has directly stated that he said there was no copyright (i.e., public domain) because there was no human author.

From here, Slater tries to flip the burden of proof, and claims that the copyright is his until proven otherwise in court:

?If the monkey took it, it owns copyright, not me, that?s their basic argument. What they don?t realise is that it needs a court to decide that,? he said.

While it’s true that a court would decide the final result, the burden is actually on the copyright holder. To bring a copyright claim, you first have to prove that you hold the copyright. It’s not the other way around. As Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge notes, a system in which you needed a court to assert an affirmative defense would mean that no one could ever claim self-defense. That’s just not how it works.

Slater also seems to believe in an odd “sweat of the brow” concept of copyright that simply isn’t relevant:

?That trip cost me about £2,000 for that monkey shot. Not to mention the £5,000 of equipment I carried, the insurance, the computer stuff I used to process the images. Photography is an expensive profession that?s being encroached upon. They?re taking our livelihoods away,? he said.

The amount that the trip cost is meaningless on the copyright status of the photo. Photography is an expensive profession, but sometimes, apparently, it’s so simple that… well… even a monkey can do it.

That said, the whole “jeopardizing his income” and “taking livelihoods away” lines are pretty extreme and ridiculous. This photo got Slater a tremendous amount of fame, and a chance to capitalize on that. If he wasn’t so focused on a misguided legal fight against Wikimedia, why not use the photo as a calling card to get hired to do all sorts of other wildlife shots?

So why is this even an issue again at all? Well, that’s partly Wikimedia’s fault. It just released a transparency report, which discusses the whole monkey situation in a case study.

Filed Under: copyright, david slater, monkeys, photography, public domain

Amazon Got 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent Because CAFC Says Obvious Ideas Must Be Written Down

from the idiots dept

So, about a month ago, we wrote about Amazon’s ridiculous new patent on “photography against a white background,” which got a fair bit of attention. There were debates among photographers, patent lawyers and lots of other people with opinions about just how legitimate (or not) the patent really was (hint: it’s not). However, Charles Duan, Public Knowledge’s patent expert, has written up a fantastic explanation for how Amazon was able to get the patent. And the main culprit, in a twist that should surprise no one is… CAFC. Yes, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit strikes again.

The ethically challenged court that is at the root of so many problems in the patent system, often thanks to a too close relationship with patent lawyers, is the heart of the problem once again. Even with the Supreme Court unanimously reversing CAFC left and right (and even saying that CAFC “fundamentally misunderstands what it means to infringe” a patent), CAFC is still causing all sorts of damage.

The issue here is “obviousness.” Now, you may recall that, back in 2007 (back when the Supreme Court was just getting warmed up with its annual bout of CAFC-smacking), the Supreme Court issued an important ruling in Teleflex v. KSR, saying that the CAFC’s “standard” for what counts as “obvious” was way too strict, and that patent examiners should be allowed to use basic common sense in rejecting patents that tried to claim obvious things. This resulted in new guidelines at the US Patent Office, in which examiners actually had some ability to apply common sense. The new rules had an immediate impact, with courts and patent examiners getting much more aggressive in rejecting bad patents. Unfortunately, in 2010, then USPTO director David Kappos rewrote the rules again, deleting a bunch of “tests” for obviousness, making it once again harder for examiners to reject patents for obviousness.

More recently, CAFC effectively blessed a new set of very strict rules for judging obviousness that require any indication of obviousness to be written down somewhere. In other words, if you can’t point to a written explanation that explicitly states that something is obvious, the USPTO won’t reject a patent for being obvious. As Duan explains:

Hear-Wear was about a patent on hearing aids. The patent was being reconsidered by the Patent Office, and the independent claims had already been held unpatentable.

But a dependent claim further added an element about a wire coming out of the hearing aid:

Claim 3. The at least partially in-the-canal module for a hearing aid of claim 2 [of the Hear-Wear patent] wherein said insulated wiring portion is terminated by a plurality of prongs that provide a detachable mechanical and electrical connection to an audio processing module.

This is complicated language, so the visual to the right should help you to understand it.

Most people call this a plug: a plurality of prongs (those two things at the end) that provide a detachable mechanical (you can plug and unplug it) and electrical connection (electricity flows across the prongs) to an audio processing module (whatever you plug it into, like your computer).

It is hard to believe that a patent could be granted for adding a multi-pronged plug to a well-known invention. “Every purchaser of electrical devices in the United States for the past 50 years or more is familiar with multipronged electrical connections,” wrote the lone dissenting judge in Hear-Wear.  But the two judges in the majority would have none of that. As they said, the Patent Office “cannot accept general conclusions about what is ‘basic knowledge’ or ‘common sense’ as a replacement for documentary evidence for core factual findings in a determination of patentability.” Proving this patent obvious, according to them, required paper documentation.

Even though this latest case is a recent ruling, it shows the kind of situation that CAFC has been creating for ages. It has never appreciated the idea that obviousness is different than prior art. A patent is only supposed to be awarded if it’s both new and non-obvious to a person skilled in the art. But, for reasons that make no sense, many in the patent world seem to think that something is only obvious if it’s been first written down somewhere specifically. But, of course, some things are so obvious that there’s no need to write them down.

And that’s the case with this white background patent. As Duan points out, one of the dependent claims adds what may seem like a useless detail to the patent: “The studio arrangement of claim 2, wherein the first distance is about 4.5–5.5 times a height of the top surface of the elevated platform. ” That 4.5-5.5 times issue is really nothing special, but because a previous patent on a similar setup doesn’t include the number, well, suddenly this patent is “non-obvious.”

No one would write an article with that exact distance ratio or file a patent application about it. No one would want to do so. It was too uninteresting a feature to have ever merited any attention. Who knew if Saigo had used that distance ratio—Saigo’s application didn’t say. Who knew how many other photographers had actually used that distance ratio before—it didn’t matter, since it wasn’t on paper before her. Who knew if some college dissertation mentioned the exact numbers—with only a few hours left, and with a stack of other applications to examine, this examiner would not find it.

It was a silly thing to grant a patent on, no? Photography against a white background is obvious, but photography against a white background at a certain distance is nonobvious? The examiner could perceive no reason why that 4.5–5.5 ratio was advantageous, and the text of the application revealed none. If this patent issued, it would not be because the invention was an improvement; it was because this Studio Arrangement claim was different. Not better, just different.

But, the law said, that was enough to grant a patent.

Welcome to the wonderfully insane world of patent law, where common sense has no place. And you can patent just about anything if you’re tricky enough.

Filed Under: cafc, obviousness, patents, photography, prior art, uspto, white background, written down
Companies: ksr

German Court Rules Ex-Lovers Must Disappear Consensual Previously Taken Nude Pictures Of The Other

from the no-takebacks dept

The aspect of the whole “right to be forgotten” business that’s been occurring in Europe that most interests me isn’t the legal wranglings or the plethora of unforeseen consequences that will inevitably rear its ugly head. Rather, I’m chiefly interested in the mentality that wanting such legislation suggests. That mentality appears to essentially amount to a request that chosen-actions that might end up being embarrassing should be subject to the whims of he or she that might be embarrassed. While this strikes me as immensely silly, it’s not difficult to understand that the unprecedentedly long memory of the internet, as well as its inherent function as an easily-searched index, has made the consequences for embarrassing actions occur on a longer timeline than ever before. Pushing back against that change in the action-response scenario was probably inevitable, even if it’s still wrong.

But it isn’t just the internet that creates these kinds of scenarios. Digital photography presents a similar problem, with embarrassing images easily stored in perpetuity on hard drives and free from the wear and tear that old developed photos had to endure. And that’s how we end up with a German court ruling that ex-lovers who had consented to being photographed nude and/or engaged in sexual activity must be deleted once the relationship ends.

The man, an unnamed photographer, had taken explicit photographs of his partner and made erotic videos with her throughout their relationship. The court heard the woman had consented to all of the material being taken and, in some cases, had taken the photographs herself. When their relationship ended, the woman insisted that all of the images and videos she appeared in be deleted.

The court agreed that any privately recorded nude pictures and footage which she appeared in should be deleted or withdrawn on the grounds of personal rights, which are considered higher than the ownership rights of the photographer, the Local has reported.

Let’s wade around the legal weeds of German rights for a moment and break this down in laymen’s terms. The court has ruled that actions previously agreed to are subject to the wants of that actor once a romantic relationship ends simply because they might embarrass said actor. One might have sympathy with the woman in this specific case, who didn’t want her ex-lover to retain nude photos or videos of her in suggestive situations with him. But negating the responsibility for decisions made is going to open up a whole can of worms the court has no business involving itself in. In this case, they ruled that photos of the woman fully-clothed weren’t subject to deletion, because they wouldn’t “compromise” her. Great, except now define “fully-clothed”, explain why the woman’s feelings that her in a low-cut t-shirt isn’t fully clothed, what ability the court has demonstrated to be a good arbiter of other people’s feelings of being compromised, etc.

The point is that when the courts get involved in attempting to protect people from their own feelings, it’s going to go wrong. Each and every time. Because the court shouldn’t be in this kind of subjective debate. On top of that, alleviating citizens from the consequences of actions they consented to isn’t the court’s business either. Yes, it’s possible that the man may use the photos in questionable ways, but let the court deal with those offenses rather than the vague possibility of an offense. This court instead said the ex had to delete the photos that are his to possess, simply because. Have fun with the resulting caseload, Germany.

Filed Under: germany, photography, relationships, right to be forgotten

US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent To Amazon

from the maybe-someone-at-the-office-checked-the-wrong-box? dept

The US Patent and Trademark Office is frequently maligned for its baffling/terrible decisions… and rightfully so. Because this is exactly the sort of thing for which the USPTO should be maligned. Udi Tirosh at DIY Photography has uncovered a recently granted patent for the previously-unheard of process of photographing things/people against a white backdrop… to of all companies, Amazon.

I am not really sure how to tag this other than a big #fail for the USPTO, or a huge Kudos for Amazon’s IP attorneys. In a patent simply called Studio arrangement Amazon took IP ownership on what we all call shooting against a seamless white backdrop.

Here’s a photo of Amazon’s bold new photography concept (US Patent 8,676,045), which pretty much looks like every photo studio in the history of photo studios.

There’s plenty of technical text to separate Amazon’s white-backdropped photo studio from the thousands in existence prior to 2011 (the date of filing), which shows just how innovative Amazon’s concept is:

a background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially perpendicular to a surface of the white cyclorama; an image capture position located between the background and the front light source in the longitudinal axis, the image capture position comprising at least one image capture device equipped with an eighty-five millimeter lens, the at least one image capture device further configured with an ISO setting of about three hundred twenty and an f-stop value of about 5.6…

Amazon does more explaining later on, differentiating its proprietary white-background photo thing from others exactly like it by pointing out that prior art often refers to image retouching, green screens or other forms of image manipulation. Amazon’s technique is apparently the purest of the pure, being only the photographer, the photographed object/person, the white background, a number of front lights/back lights and some sort of object separating the subject from the ground below it.

How does this breakthrough work in practice? Glad you asked.

1. Turn back lights on.
2. Turn front lights on.
3. Position thing on platform.
4. Take picture.

Now, we’ll note that in all fairness (HAHAHAHA), Amazon filed this application back in the early days of photography, circa 2011. Nearly three years later, that foresight has paid off, and Amazon can now corner the market on taking pictures in front of a white background.

Currently, prior art input is being sought at Stack Exchange’s Ask Patents, but questions about the patent’s viability may come down to the very specific specifics listed above. On one hand, the listed stipulations make it easier to route around. On the other hand, two of the specifics are hedged with the word “about,” leaving only the 85mm lens specification as truly “unique.”

Is Amazon about to start sending demand letters to photo studios? That seems unlikely. But it does raise the question as to why this patent was sought in the first place. If this is how Amazon performs its product photography, it seems like it could have been handled in an internal document, rather than pushed through the patent office. Even if it’s never used for trolling, it’s still on record as “something Amazon thought up,” rather than nowhere to be found as studio setups for shooting against a white background have been in use for several decades.

Chalk up another loss in the USPTO’s column and a baffling, oblique “win” for Amazon’s IP legal team, which now “owns” an obvious method.

Filed Under: patents, photography, uspto, white background
Companies: amazon

DailyDirt: Seeing In The Dark

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some animals, like cats, can see much better in the dark than us humans. (However, cats can’t see in total darkness, they just need about a sixth of the light our eyes need to see.) Other animals, like bats, use echolocation to “see” without any light at all. Some people have figured out how to use echolocation, but until we start genetically engineering our eyeballs to be more like a cat’s eye, we’ll have to use special cameras and sensors to see in low light situations (barring the use of flashlights). Here are just a few examples of some night vision tech.

• Graphene-based light detectors can see the full infrared spectrum — providing night vision without the traditional cooling equipment needed for infrared goggles. Prototype sensors are really small, so it might be possible to add them on contact lenses. [url]
• Night vision videos are usually fuzzy green-on-black images, but some new cameras can capture a bit of color in the darkness. This video compares video taken from a Canon FS-100 versus a Falcon Eye KC-2000 — demonstrating how the Falcon Eye camera would perform much better for military and police operations. [url]
• Using an off-the-shelf photon detector and low intensity visible laser light, MIT researchers have been able to algorithmically generate high resolution 3D images in dimly lit environments. The technique produces monochromatic images, but further developments of new computational imaging techniques could improve this low light photography method. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: 3d images, algorithm, computational imaging techniques, graphene, infrared vision, low light, night vision, photography, photon detector, sensors

DailyDirt: Algorithms + Cameras = Awesome

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Digital cameras are almost everywhere, and they’re getting smaller and smarter. Whole new categories of cameras are being developed that don’t need lenses or don’t need large sensors. Instead, algorithms are being used to manipulate digitized light rays to create impressive images without traditional camera components. Here are just a few examples.

• Rambus is developing a super tiny camera that could be embedded in almost anything. The imaging from this lensless sensor is pretty low resolution, but it’s good enough for many situations, and it could even record video. [url]
• Capturing 3D images with a single lens camera can be done without moving the camera. The trick is done by taking a picture of the same object but focused at different depths. The technique is called “light field moment imaging” and uses an algorithm to create the stereoscopic images. [url]
• Bell Labs is working on single pixel, lensless cameras. The technique used here is called “compressive sensing” and relies on a randomized array of apertures to collect multiple snapshots that can re-create a high-resolution image. The applications aren’t exactly obvious, but perhaps astronomers or photographers of slow-moving subjects would be interested. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: 3d images, algorithms, camera gear, cameras, compressive sensing, lensless camera, light field moment imaging, photography, sensors, video recording
Companies: bell labs, rambus

New Law Means Photographers In Hungary Must Ask Permission First; Bad Hungarian Cops Rejoice

from the not-waving,-but-drowning dept

Last year, we wrote about a weird law in Sweden that forbade photos from being taken indoors without asking permission. Now Hungary has gone even further. As The Guardian reports, the country has brought in:

a new civil code that outlaws taking pictures without the permission of everyone in the photograph. According to the justice ministry, people taking pictures should look out for those “who are not waving, or who are trying to hide or running out of shot”.

Although the Hungarian government claims this is simply codifying existing practice, there’s one area where it is likely to have a big impact, as the lawyer Eszter Bognár explains:

“I don’t think this is going to change the practice of photographing ‘normal’ people, because they don’t have the possibility to ID the person taking the photo, but it’s going to be more difficult to take pictures of policemen.”

And Márton Magócsi, senior photo editor at news website Origo, warns:

“The real danger is that private security companies or the police will try to keep reporters and photojournalists out of certain areas, or prevent them and members of the public from taking photographs of their actions,” he adds.

That’s something we’re seeing increasingly, and it seems to be part of a general trend to counter the inconvenient ubiquity of high-quality cameras, now routinely found on mobile phones. The photos and videos they record can be used as compelling evidence of illegal police actions that before might have escaped punishment for want of any proof. The new Hungarian law means bad apples in the country’s police force will find it easier to avoid this kind of scrutiny.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: hungary, permission, photography

Legislators Rush To Patch Hole In 'Secret Photography' Law; 'Succeed' In Making It Make It Much, Much Worse

from the fixitfixitfixitfixitfixitfixitfixit! dept

The law is an ass. This has been true since well before Charles Dickens cranked out Oliver Twist in order to fulfill his four-book contract with Penguin Classics. We also hear quite frequently how the law’s ass-ish gears (sorry, some metaphors are going be forcibly combined here) grind slowly, eventually birthing justice itself or, far more frequently, suffering a miscarriage.

Sometimes, however, the law is like an ass operating a second-rate rollercoaster for a third-rate traveling carnival in a fourth-rate town. It lurches forward and backward like a carny with a .28 BAC (also known as “cruising altitude”), with one hand lazily manipulating the rusty throttle/brake on this metaphorical coaster, giving every rider the opportunity to lose their lunches while simultaneously suffering whiplash.

Here’s how everything went down.

On March 5th, the Massachusetts state supreme court found that “upskirt” photography was perfectly legal according to state law. The law, as (was) written, offered no protection for clothed individuals in public places. Dressing rooms, bathrooms, etc. were off-limits, clothed or not, but nothing in the law specifically protected the (clothed) public from people like Michael Robertson, who was caught by police holding his phone at waist-level to capture upskirt photos of fellow subway passengers.

Needless to say, outrage ensued. Instant outrage that ensnared several lawmakers, all of whom immediately rewrote the statute governing “secret photography” in order to prevent the state’s pervert contingent from instantly turning every subway car into an (ultimately disappointing) sausage/camera fest.

When I say “immediately,” I actually mean it. The rewrite was voted and passed March 6th and signed into law by the governor on the morning of March 7th. Within 48 hours, “upskirting” had gone from “presumably illegal” to “legal” to “very certainly illegal.”

As is the case with any law based on instant reaction (you know, rather than a deliberative legislative process), it’s problematic in its expansive terminology, as Jay Wolman of The Legal Satyricon points out.

Let me spell it out for you–Massachusetts just made many previously lawful and proper hidden security cameras potentially unlawful.

According to the new law, it is now unlawful to secretly record images of fully clothed breasts, buttocks and genitals. Full stop. Your nanny thinks she’s alone, but you have a nanny-cam. Sorry, you probably just broke the law. You want to know which of the neighborhood kids have been going into your backyard when you aren’t home and stomping your daisies? That’s double the punishment.

Here’s what’s being inserted into the state’s law governing “Photographing, videotaping or electronically surveilling partially nude or nude person(s):”

Whoever willfully photographs, videotapes or electronically surveils, with the intent to secretly conduct or hide such activity, the sexual or other intimate parts of a person under or around the person’s clothing to view or attempt to view the person’s sexual or other intimate parts when a reasonable person would believe that the person’s sexual or other intimate parts would not be visible to the public and without the person’s knowledge and consent, shall be punished by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2½ years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both fine and imprisonment.

Whoever willfully photographs, videotapes or electronically surveils, with the intent to secretly conduct or hide such activity, the sexual or other intimate parts of a child under the age of 18 under or around the child’s clothing to view or attempt to view the child’s sexual or other intimate parts when a reasonable person would believe that the person’s sexual or other intimate parts would not be visible to the public shall be punished by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2½ years, by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 5 years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

That’s a lot of area being covered and none of it very specifically. It relies on a “reasonable person’s” view of the intent of the photographer. When that “reasonable person” is a prosecutor, the obvious unintended collateral damage becomes apparent.

The law practically invites bystanders to point and scream like pod people whenever someone operates a cellphone or camera from lower than eye level. And while it attempts to address the previous law’s shortcomings, it seems to leave decolletage enthusiasts free to do their thing (like shooting photos from above passersby, rather than under or around).

But it also turns anything merely questionable (photography-wise) into something potentially actionable. Any “secret” (read: “surveillance”) photography could easily become an issue simply because the person being photographed is unaware of the camera’s existence.

To expand on Wolman’s example: you catch your nanny stealing using your home’s camera system, but he or she spins it as “secret photography” and points out the frames that seem to catch him or her in positions that are “revealing.” Good luck proving that you didn’t set up the camera solely in hopes of catching a nude or nearly-nude nanny at some point in time. For that matter, good luck proving that the above wasn’t merely one of the reasons you set up the camera.

And if your nanny is under the age of 18 (or substitute “babysitter” for “nanny”), you’re in even more trouble. The prosecutor’s not going to hit this law and stop. You’ll also be looking at potential child pornography charges.

The state has to prove intent to make charges stick, but all that truly means is that it has to drop these accusations in front of a grand jury (the misdemeanor becomes a felony if the captured images are “distributed”) and you’re as good as convicted. An indictment looks a lot like a criminal sentence, especially if legislators are breathing (heavily) down prosecutors’ necks, urging them to pursue maximum sentences and bail.

So, once again, we see legislative whiplash turning a questionable law into a terrible law. This isn’t ever going to change. The only hope is that, once time and distance take their toll, the law will be revisited and repaired. In the meantime, citizens of Massachusetts will need to keep their cameras up high, completely visible and miles away from children, women in skirts, and anyone else whose clothing might reveal something if approached from lower/oblique angles.

Filed Under: massachusetts, michael robertson, photography, privacy

Some Chefs Still Insisting That Photographing Meals Steals Some Of Their Intellectual Property

from the just-a-wafer-thin-mint-sir dept

A few years ago we noted how there appeared to be a growing belief among some chefs that taking photographs of their dishes when you’re in their restaurants is somehow “taking away their intellectual property.” We’ve discussed a few times about how restaurants are just one of many industries where a lack of copyright protection has actually helped innovation flourish (read: an industry that shows that there can be great creativity without saddling the entire apparatus down with copyright, such as magic or stand up comedy).

While many chefs seem to simply think that foodies and patrons photographing their food is a sign of respect or just begrudgingly tolerate it, others seem to have succumbed to copyright maximalism disease, whereby one believes that you’re allowed to “own” things you’re clearly not entitled to. Despite the idea being rather groundless, it appears that it has recently caught on among a smattering of chefs overseas:

“Gilles Goujon, from the three-starred L’Auberge du vieux puits in the south of France, has stated in an interview with news website France TV that foodtography is not only poor etiquette but he believes that when his dishes appear online, it takes away “a little bit of my intellectual property”. Another chef in La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil has also included a “no camera” policy on his menus for this reason.”

While kicking people out of your restaurant is certainly your prerogative (and there certainly are people who are so in love with their smartphone that dining with them is annoying), why would you want to punish paying customers for appreciating your work? The end result would likely hurt your brand long before it managed to protect any personal acumen in your stated craft. Other chefs lament that not only are you stealing their IP, you’re doing a really crap job of it because you’re probably a bad photographer:

“US chef RJ Cooper, from Rogue 24 in Washington DC, has made similar claims…: “They publish food photos without your consent, which is taking intellectual property away from the restaurant. And also, generally, the photographs are terrible. “If you’re publishing something in a public forum without written consent, that’s problematic.”

That seems about as logical to me as the superstition that taking photographs of an individual leeches away a tiny part of their soul. Just because I take a photo of your meal, does that mean I’m somehow magically also stealing what is probably a complicated recipe? So what you’re saying essentially is you “own” the IP of laying several strips of beef just so and dribbling the entire concoction with sauce in a particular way? It’s quite a bit of nonsense, and fortunately for patrons, no lawyer appears to have been interested in testing this theory, even if it’s starting to seem like only a matter of time before one does.

Filed Under: copyright, food, gilles goujon, photography

Getty Images Decides It's Mostly Better To Compete Than Sue, Frees Up Millions Of Images

from the a-step-in-the-right-direction dept

Getty Images has something of a reputation as a copyright maximalist. The company’s representatives have testified before Congress and pushed for copyright expansion in the past. It’s also well known for filing copyright lawsuits on those it claims illegally used its images. Hell, just a few weeks ago, some were debating if Getty should be described as a copyright troll after filing a flurry of copyright infringement lawsuits.

So it’s fairly big news to find out that Getty is trying to get ahead of the curve by making millions of its photos free for sites to use via an embed code — a la YouTube, Twitter and lots of other sites. Basically, it looks like the company is admitting to reality and adapting (though, apparently freaking out photographers in the process…):

But according to Craig Peters, a business development exec at Getty Images, that ship sailed long ago. “Look, if you want to get a Getty image today, you can find it without a watermark very simply,” he says. “The way you do that is you go to one of our customer sites and you right-click. Or you go to Google Image search or Bing Image Search and you get it there. And that’s what’s happening… Our content was everywhere already.”

[….]

“Before there was iTunes, before there was Spotify, people were put in that situation where they were basically forced to do the wrong thing, sharing files,” Peters says. Now, if an aspiring producer wants to leak a song to the web but keep control of it, they can drop it on Soundcloud. Any blog can embed the player, and the artist can disable it whenever they want. And as Google has proved with YouTube, it’s easy to drop ads or “buy here” links into that embed. “We’ve seen what YouTube’s done with monetizing their embed capabilities,” Peters says. “I don’t know if that’s going to be appropriate for us or not.” But as long as the images are being taken as embeds rather than free-floating files, the company will have options.

That sounds positively forward looking for an organization with a history (both long term and recent) of being anything but forward thinking. There are some caveats. It is not all of Getty’s images, as the Verge article linked above implies. It appears that some of the key collections will still be fee-only. And, you can argue that Getty already has some experience in the free stock image game, seeing as it owns iStockphoto which offers up some free options. This is a little different on two fronts. First, most free stock image banks are… well, pretty crappy. The quality just isn’t there. Second, while free stock photo services often let you copy and use the photos, Getty requires this embed, which has some potential issues in that you really don’t know what they might do in the future with that embed — as the quotes above make clear. That may worry some.

There’s also the fact that the company claims that they’re only allowing this for “non-commercial” usage. Now, as we’ve discussed for years the line between commercial and non-commercial is painfully blurry — as it’s possible that almost anything people do can be twisted to argue it’s a commercial use. Thankfully, it appears that Getty is making it clear upfront that it’s taking an extremely (surprisingly) open view on what counts as “non-commercial” noting that any use for “editorial” will be considered non-commercial, even if done by a commercial enterprise, including the NY Times and Buzzfeed:

Blogs that draw revenues from Google Ads will still be able to use the Getty Images embed player at no cost. “We would not consider this commercial use,” says Peters. “The fact today that a website is generating revenue would not limit the use of the embed. What would limit that use is if they used our imagery to promote a service, a product or their business. They would need to get a license.” A spokeswoman for Getty Images confirms to BJP that editorial websites, from The New York Times to Buzzfeed, will also be able to use the embed feature as long as images are used in an editorial context.

At the same time, the company admits that it’s not dropping its lawsuit strategy, and will continue to sue those it feels go too far, which may make things a little dicey for some users. Hopefully, the company will be as explicit in its official terms that embedding for editorial purposes will always be deemed legit.

While we’re a little wary of Getty given some of its past actions, the company should be applauded for actually recognizing reality, and trying to adapt accordingly, recognizing how it might better serve people who otherwise would automatically go somewhere else.

Not too long ago, we had actually explored various stock photography offerings that were out there, even talking to Getty about its program (which was insanely expensive). Instead, we decided to focus on situations where Creative Commons images and/or fair use situations would work best. However, with this move, we may take another look at Getty for our own image needs.

Filed Under: embedding, photography, stock photo
Companies: getty images