Landscape, Nature and Travel Photography

I found recent news of an on going dispute between Robert Wyland and the California Coastal Commission over the use of his whale tail license plate design quite interesting. I actually have this license plate on my car and never knew it was a Robert Wyland design. In short Wyland is asking that 20% of future revenue be donated to his art foundation and the California Coastal Commission is not interested.

The licensing arrangement was apparently a handshake deal and Wyland is arguing that it was never intended to last forever. I have mixed feelings about this dispute. The California Coastal Commission has been using the design for the license plate (its intended purpose), yet how could you relinquish the rights to an image on a handshake deal as an artist in this day and age.

For up and coming photographers the argument against Wyland is something commonly heard:

“For its part, the commission has reminded the artist that the Wyland brand and foundation have benefited from the goodwill and free publicity from the plates which also feature his signature. The plate appears on the commission’s Web site, press releases for the plate and DMV material that are mailed to millions of California drivers.

On the flipside Wyland argues:

“After allowing the state to use his intellectual property rent free for 14 years, Wyland said his foundation is entitled to an annual contribution. The alternative is the state gets nothing.

“I would just say it would be like Picasso lending one of his pieces for a license plate and them saying we’re not donating to the Picasso Foundation,” said Wyland, an official artist for the United States Olympic Team for the 2008 Games. “They’re saying ‘We can get anyone to paint a Picasso.’ Well you could, but it wouldn’t be a Picasso.”"

I can see both sides of this argument and really wonder why it took Wyland 14 years to suddenly realize that he should get some revenue off his donation. I have to really scratch my head why a license agreement wasn’t drafted and signed to avoid this kind of mess in the first place. On the flipside I hardly think the California Coastal Commission is doing as much as they claim to promote his artwork and contribution. I checked the California Coastal Commission web site and found two references to his name, but no link to his his web site or the web site of his art organization.

So who is to blame in this situation? You make the call… let me know how you interpret this mess.

Read the latest on this battle in this San Francisco Chronicle article:
Artist in spat over Calif license plate royalties

Technorati Tags: Robert Wyland, California Coastal Commission, licensing

I was catching up on my blog reading briefly this morning and happened to catch a brief entry on Lawrence Lessig’s blog about an online petition he felt compelled to sign: “Against the Orphan Works Act of 2008“. As many of you may know Mr. Lessig has been vocal in his opposition to the current form of the Orphans Work Legislation now being reviewed in Washington D.C. His op-ed piece in the New York Times “Little Orphan Artwork” was dead on and is worth reading if you’re unfamiliar with it.

For those that create work (inclusive of photography, video, written work, etc.) protected by U.S. Copyright law I also highly recommend making use of the forms to email your opposition to the Orphans Work Legislation to your Congressperson and Senator:
Take Action: Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work

Technorati Tags: Orphan Work Legislation, Lawrence Lessig, petition

Up until recently it’s been nearly impossible to know for certain where your online photos might end up on the Internet. As we’ve heard over the years a growing vocal minority will be the first to jump on photographers complaining about online image theft stating “Get used to it. You put it online. That’s how it is.” This argument is anything but true and frustrates the hell out of photographers who know better.

It’s become clear there is a growing interest in new technologies to address the current “wild west” nature of image theft on the Internet by stock agencies and individual photographers alike. Google recently released a research paper on VisualRank that like text search assigns a weighting and ranking to images while also leveraging image-recognition software methods. Although Google is the 800 pound gorilla of search they’ve been beat to the punch by Idée Inc. who recently released a private beta of TinEye. As you’ll see in TinEye’s demonstration video they’ve created an image search that is as simple as a Google search. All an end user has to do is reference an image online or upload a low resolution image and TinEye returns results of where that image is currently found online. What is most impressive is their image matching technology that will match similar images even if they’ve been cropped, resized or Photoshop’d.

I am a born cynic, but after putting TinEye to the test with some of my photos I’ve quickly become a believer and can’t wait for them to expand their search index and hopefully implement a Google Alert like service. At the moment they’ve indexed a relatively small portion of the Internet (roughly 500,000,000 images), but they’re asking beta testers to recommend sites to index. The service at the moment is rather narrow, but I can see where this has legs to quickly expand.

Just to show an example I decided to search one of my more commonly referenced photos of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City. The blog post containing this image has been accessed nearly 50,000 times and it is one of my most popular photos. With out a doubt I knew this would end up somewhere it was not supposed to. In the past by monitoring my web site log I’ve caught a few people using the image with out my knowledge, so I figured this would be a perfect example to test on TinEye.

Click to Enlarge

Sure enough I referenced the image on my blog and found a few more sites (see above) that had slipped by me who have been using my photo without my knowledge or permission.

Granted the jury is still out with TinEye, but my initial experience has been a good one. The simplicity of the interface, the image-recognition capabilities and speed at which it finds images has caught my eye. I’ll definitely be watching TinEye as it develops and provide feedback through its beta stage.

If you’re curious to try TinEye let me know in your comment to this post. I have 50 invites that I can share.

Technorati Tags: copyright, photo, image, search, theft, technology, TinEye

In mid-April there was an excellent panel discussion “Copyright in a Hyper Digital Age” put on by ASMP discussing the changing landscape of Copyright law as it impacts photographers. A variety of discussions took place, but the most timely and interesting was about the Orphans Work legislation that is again being discussed in the US Congress and US Senate. No other legislation is likely to have as big of an impact on photographers in recent years as the Orphans Work legislation. Mr. Vic Perlman, ASMP General Council, gives an informative description and update in this video that was recorded a week before Orphans Work legislation was reintroduced in Washington D.C.

This video is 24 minutes long and I highly recommend watching it in full. I guarantee you’ll find it of value if you’re serious about providing full protection to your photographic work. After this discussion there were additional comments provided by each panel member. I will be posting individual videos of each panelists comments tomorrow. Stay Tuned. ASMP should be releasing a podcast and/or videos which covered this portion of the event.

Update: This video covers only the first two speakers. Additional videos of the other speakers will be added shortly.
Update #2: The remaining videos are now available after the jump.

Vic Perlmann, General Counsel ASMP and Mike Linksvayer, Vice President Creative Commons

For other Orphans Works legislation discussions check the following sights:

• EXIF and Beyond: Jeff Sedlik Interview Part I and II
• John Harrington
• Chase Jarvis

For the techies out there this video was taken with a Nokia N95. I’ve been amazed at how well the video on this phone works. The resolution on videos taken with this phone are incredibly good. Too good for online hosting services. Stay tuned for more I got a lot out of my limited time with the Nokia N95 and have more videos from the phone coming. Read more… »

The 16th and 17th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released.

These episodes feature an interview with Jeff Sedlik, President and CEO of the PLUS Coalition (usePLUS.org), current Professor of Photography at the Art Center College of Design and also a past president of the Advertising Photographers of America (APA).

Discussed is the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS). Although relatively young by comparison to other photographic standards bodies, PLUS is tackling tough contemporary issues facing photographers. Both episodes are packed with valuable information every photographers should be aware of.

Part I of the interview covers PLUS Standards including the PLUS Glossary, License Generator, PLUS – IDs and the differentiators between PLUS, IPTC, and Creative Commons.

Part II of the interview covers machine readability, pending Orphan Works Copyright legislation, metadata, the PLUS Artist & Licensor Registry and the future of PLUS .

Download the latest episodes:
EXIF and Beyond: Jeff Sedlik Interview Part I and II

For the non-iTune listeners a streaming version of this podcast can be accessed here.

Technorati Tags: EXIF and Beyond, podcast, interview, Jeff Sedlik, PLUS, Picture Licensing Universal System, PLUS Coalition, IPTC, Creative Commons, usePLUS, standards, Orphans Work

In the May/June edition of Digital Photo Pro I have an article featured on Creative Commons that was spawned from my EXIF and Beyond podcast interview with Professor Lawrence Lessig. Look for it at your local book store. In the mean time the online version of this article has just been released and I invite you to take a look.

Creative Commons - Digital Photo Pro

Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, Lessig, Digital Photo Pro, article, Jim Goldstein, Jim M. Goldstein, EXIF and Beyond, podcast

Thursday evenings ASMP NorCal chapter event “Copyright in a Hyper Digital Age” as expected proved to be incredibly informative. The panel (see this post for the whose who of the event) was extremely impressive and spoke to copyright concerns that all photographers should be tuned in to. Not only was the panel great, but the questions asked by the audience were timely and gave a frightening snapshot to the challenges modern photographers now face.

The organizers are planning on putting out an audio podcast of the event in the near future. If all goes to plan with my schedule I’ll likely volunteer some time to help out with post-production of the recording to expedite it’s release. I also recorded video of the event with my borrowed Nokia N95 phone and will look to release that for others to view & listen after ASMP has a chance to release their recordings. Stay tuned if you missed the event. Once the ASMP podcasts and my recordings are available I’ll post an update here.

Technorati Tags: ASMP, copyright, Creative Commons, copyleft, podcast, Nokia N95

On April 17th ASMP is hosting a panel discussion titled “Copyright in a Hyper Digital Age: Copyrights? Copyleft? What rights are left?” This event should be noteworthy for several reason but most notably because of the meetings tone (see below).

This won’t be your father’s Copyright event.

This isn’t a “How to fill out the Federal Forms”, or “Let’s complain about Evil Clients” event.

This will be frank interchange between cutting edge legal minds, prominent creative industry players, and persuasive advocates.

This will be vivid insight and uncensored opinion with audience participation about artists’ rights in the digital age.

Panelists will include:

Mike Linksvayer - Vice President Creative Commons

Vic Perlman - General Counsel ASMP

M.J. Bogatin - Board President of California Lawyers for the Arts

Henry W. Jones, III (Hank) - Former General Counsel and VP of intellectual property of several Silicon Valley tech companies and consultant on Open Source and Intellectual Property rights

Gerald Bybee - Long time professional photographer. Consultant and expert witness on legal cases involving copyright in photography

Panel moderated by Jeff Pfluege

Location: Academy of Art Auditorium & Gallery. 79 New Montgomery, San Francisco

Date and Time: Thursday, April 17th, 7pm

Social hour begins at 6pm

Admission information can be found on the following event page.
Copyright in a Hyper Digital Age

See you there!

Technorati Tags: Copyright, Digital Age, ASMP, event