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Israeli Prime Minister’s Party to Pay Photographer $5000 Due to Copyright Infringement

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Politicians write the rules, but that doesn’t mean they need to follow them, right? But it is also becoming more common for courts to rule in favor of the artist than it used to…

A Jerusalem court judge had ordered the Likud party, lead by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to pay 20,000 NIS (approx. $5,000) in compensation due to copyright infringement.

The photographer, Shmuel Rachmani, sued the Likud for $37,500 following its failure to credit two of his images which the Likud had used in a television campaign last year.[Read More…]

Photostealers, Please Take My Images Or Why It Sucks To Fight Copyright Infringements From Overseas

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This is a sad story about image thievery (again), and why I think it is so common on the internet. It is coming from a personal perspective, but I think there is much to be learned from it about how easy stealing images is nowadays and how (despite the law is on our side) it is sometimes very hard to fight. Being a photo stealing story, it  obviously starts with one of my images being “borrowed”. I was considering my options. Each and every article on the web says talk to a lawyer, so I did.  He basically said: You can’t do anything and you will never see any money.
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Shared a Night-Time Photo Of The Eiffel Tower? You Are Breaking The Law

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One of the most iconic places to visit in France (and in Paris in particular) is the Eiffel tower. And while anyone is free to take its photos by day or night, sharing a photo of the light-show that the tower is engulfed in is pretty much infringing on the copyright of the show.

torrentfreak aims a spot light on this weird copyright situation by explaining that some architecture and some landmarks are copyrighted.

Actually, the Eiffel tower official website states this pretty clearly:

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Photographer’s Image Gets Stolen For A Political Attack Ad

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The Alaskan photographer Mark Osborne recently had not-so-nice surprise waiting for him in the mail: A political attack ad targeting his friend that’s running for the State of Alaska House Of Representatives, Dan Ortiz. The nasty thing about this ad was the image that was used: It was a screengrab from a video that Mark shot himself. Understandably upset about the unauthorized use of his image, Mark Osborne responded in the classiest manner possible:

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No, You Can Not Patent “Sorting And Uploading Photos For Athletes To Download”

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A few weeks back we reported a weird patent lawsuit. , PhotoCrazy (owned by Peter Wolf), was suing a South Carolina event photography business, Capstone, for violating a few patents. without going into the technicalities of it Photocrazy claimed that “taking photos of an athlete at an event, sorting the images by the bib number wore by the athlete, and putting them a website” is their patent.

Sound like bull, right?

Right! And court backs it up.

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Are Patents Like The Three This Photographer Holds Harmful Or Ultimately Helpful For Our Industry?

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A California based company, PhotoCrazy (owned by Peter Wolf), is suing a South Carolina event photography business, Capstone, for violating three of PhotoCrazy’s patents. The patents, 6,985,875; 7,047,214; and 7,870,035, grant PhotoCrazy exclusive rights to certain workflows that have been commonly used in sporting event photography for quite some time.  More specifically, it cites taking photos of an athlete at an event, sorting the images by the bib number wore by the athlete, and putting them a website which allows athletes to quickly find their photos by entering their bib number. Like I said, a very common practice.

Is this starting to remind you of the Amazon patent hullabaloo?
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The Ins and Outs of Using On-Line Photos

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A few months ago, a friend of mine was scrolling through a photography website when he saw something that made him jump out of his chair. There on the screen was a photo of his 6-year-old daughter– sitting on the grass under a stunning summer sky in her beautiful pink dress, having a tea party with her stuffed animals and three kittens. There were several problems with the photo. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, my friend had not taken or posted this particular photo of his daughter. In his original photo, the sky was overcast, the dress was yellow, and his daughter– who is actually dangerously allergic to cats– was enjoying a quiet moment alone. More importantly, however, the person who created this composite had never asked for permission to use the original. Needless to say, my friend was more than a little pissed off and immediately set to the task of tracking down the photographer and “politely asking” that the image be taken down immediately. It took a while, but the photographer eventually complied.

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