So by your logic, any case with monetary damages attached to it is baseless and motivated only by money? That's a pretty specious argument without even mentioning that plenty of landmark civil rights cases had damages attached to them.
The statutory damages related to this suit seem to have worked better at getting Twitter's attention than the legitimate DMCA complaints I filed months ago that politely asked them to remove my intellectual property from their servers.
Actually, I'd prefer not to have to sue anyone. I'd rather that the person who owns the server would simply remove the material when politely asked to do so.
Um, no. PR agents are a lot cheaper than lawyers. And the results are a lot more predictable. My work has been published to date in more than 90 countries. Just how much more "famous" could I expect to be and why the hell would anyone want to gain notice for conflict as opposed to for my work itself?
And there is a difference in my mind between someone who clears the use of the work first by asking permission to repost it and someone who takes what does not belong to them and then refuses to remove it when asked.
Hey. Thanks for the post and the discussion. Just wanted to jump on with a couple of clarifications.
I understand your confusion about Tumblr use versus Twitter use. This was a miscommunication. What I said was that I don't view instances in which a private blogger posts a couple of my images as a situation worth getting upset about. The fact is that I have given away the free use of my photographs to a lot of individuals, sites and academics who simply pay me the courtesy of spending five minutes to draft an e-mail asking to use the work. I don't think that is too much to ask, especially if my content is going to be used on a site where it is generating traffic, readership and ad revenue for the site owner.
The issue with Twitter hosted images (some of which have been used without any kind of attribution) is that they grab a broad range of rights to use, distribute, make derivative copies of, sublicense, etc. my work. As a working artist there is no reason why I need to sit by while a stranger offers up my content to a large company for free. If their policies weren't so broad, and if there haven't been cases in which people have had their images taken off Twitter and used in media without compensation, I wouldn't have a problem. But in this case my action is designed to make Twitter more responsive to those cases in which legitimate content creators have filed a DMCA takedown.
In truth I've been very successful in monetizing my photographs. While the awareness of my work has been helped by people who shared links to coverage of the work on social media, almost all of the opportunities that have come to me have happened as a result of AUTHORIZED use of my photographs with syndicators, news sites, print media, design and food sites, etc. Fine art photographs from my work are sold in galleries around the world, I've had a full year of shows and exhibitions ? including a very successful solo show in New York ? and a calendar of international shows through the spring, in addition to licensing deals, editorial and commercial commissions, an a book deal with a major NY publisher.
To date my work has been published ? online and in print ? in more than 90 countries around the world. So this is absolutely and unequivocally NOT about fame or money. This is about using the law to make Twitter more responsive to takedown requests when their users have hosted content on Twitter-owned servers without permission.
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Re: Re: Clarifications
So by your logic, any case with monetary damages attached to it is baseless and motivated only by money? That's a pretty specious argument without even mentioning that plenty of landmark civil rights cases had damages attached to them.
The statutory damages related to this suit seem to have worked better at getting Twitter's attention than the legitimate DMCA complaints I filed months ago that politely asked them to remove my intellectual property from their servers.
Re: Re: Clarifications
Actually, I'd prefer not to have to sue anyone. I'd rather that the person who owns the server would simply remove the material when politely asked to do so.
Re: Streisand Effect morphs into Boffoli Effect?
Um, no. PR agents are a lot cheaper than lawyers. And the results are a lot more predictable. My work has been published to date in more than 90 countries. Just how much more "famous" could I expect to be and why the hell would anyone want to gain notice for conflict as opposed to for my work itself?
And there is a difference in my mind between someone who clears the use of the work first by asking permission to repost it and someone who takes what does not belong to them and then refuses to remove it when asked.
Clarifications
Hey. Thanks for the post and the discussion. Just wanted to jump on with a couple of clarifications.
I understand your confusion about Tumblr use versus Twitter use. This was a miscommunication. What I said was that I don't view instances in which a private blogger posts a couple of my images as a situation worth getting upset about. The fact is that I have given away the free use of my photographs to a lot of individuals, sites and academics who simply pay me the courtesy of spending five minutes to draft an e-mail asking to use the work. I don't think that is too much to ask, especially if my content is going to be used on a site where it is generating traffic, readership and ad revenue for the site owner.
The issue with Twitter hosted images (some of which have been used without any kind of attribution) is that they grab a broad range of rights to use, distribute, make derivative copies of, sublicense, etc. my work. As a working artist there is no reason why I need to sit by while a stranger offers up my content to a large company for free. If their policies weren't so broad, and if there haven't been cases in which people have had their images taken off Twitter and used in media without compensation, I wouldn't have a problem. But in this case my action is designed to make Twitter more responsive to those cases in which legitimate content creators have filed a DMCA takedown.
In truth I've been very successful in monetizing my photographs. While the awareness of my work has been helped by people who shared links to coverage of the work on social media, almost all of the opportunities that have come to me have happened as a result of AUTHORIZED use of my photographs with syndicators, news sites, print media, design and food sites, etc. Fine art photographs from my work are sold in galleries around the world, I've had a full year of shows and exhibitions ? including a very successful solo show in New York ? and a calendar of international shows through the spring, in addition to licensing deals, editorial and commercial commissions, an a book deal with a major NY publisher.
To date my work has been published ? online and in print ? in more than 90 countries around the world. So this is absolutely and unequivocally NOT about fame or money. This is about using the law to make Twitter more responsive to takedown requests when their users have hosted content on Twitter-owned servers without permission.