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:
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
18
Apr
Posted in Copyright, Photography by Jim |
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
Last week I discussed the Adobe Photoshop Express terms of use (ToU) and how the wording was nothing short of a rights grab (see Adobe Photoshop Express & The Mindless Photo Rights Grab). By weeks end John Nack posted an update, regarding the ToU, that “the Photoshop Express team has made some changes”.
Reading the paraphrased revisions on John’s blog post alleviated what concerns I had, but when I read the revised ToU I was left scratching my head wondering what the hell I just read.
First John’s post linked to the General ToU which I think has edits, but they’re not marked so I can’t be sure what they are. Text as seen at the top of the General ToU:
Last Updated on April 3, 2008.
Changes are not marked in red. Please read entire document. Please also note that these revised Terms will apply to all of Your Content as of the Effective Date.
If you do not agree with these revised Terms, please remove Your Content from the Service by the Effective Date.
What people need to certainly reread is the Adobe Photoshop Express Additional Terms of Use which has (2) two edits. On this page I get the edit about advertisements in Section 10, but I’m left confused by the most important edit to Section 8.
8. Use of Your Content.
- Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, and unless otherwise specifically agreed in any Additional Terms that might accompany individual services (such as Photoshop.com/Express), you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
I’ve reread this at least ten times and each time and the edit in red makes about as much sense as when I read it the first time. Didn’t I just read this in the “Additional Terms of Use”? Why is the Additional ToU referring to the Additional ToU? Is this not circular loop? I still don’t see how this matches up to the paraphrased note from the Photoshop Express team as noted on John Nack’s blog.
- Adobe’s Rights - Adobe has retained only those limited rights that allow us to operate the service and to enable you to do all the things the service offers. If you decide to terminate your Photoshop Express account, Adobe’s rights also will be terminated. We don’t claim ownership of your content and won’t sell your images.
- Shared Content – We clearly state the rights you’re granting other users when you choose to publicly share Your Content.
Although the edit in red still confuses the hell out of me one element of my confusion was addressed, but only after some detective work. What isn’t in the edited license is (6) striked out words that were in the previous version of the ToU “derive revenue or other remuneration from”. Previously in the context of…
…you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content…
With these words out of the ToU I can see how the claims in John Nack’s post “We don’t claim ownership of your content and won’t sell your images.” are valid.
Perhaps this all makes sense to a lawyer, but the edit to the ToU was hardly an easy thing to figure out and to be honest I’m still not 100% on what the edit now means. At least the “distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from” text has been removed.
Once again this goes to show…
1. Terms of Use are hardly readable to the common user.
2. The photo community rallying for their rights can instigate change.
Now if only Adobe could make these edits a little more clear so they’re as easy to understand as the paraphrased text in John Nack’s blog post.
Technorati Tags: Adobe, Photoshop Express, rights, copyright, software, technology, web, terms of use, rights grab, edit, revise, John Nack
As you may know I’m not a big proponent of using Creative Commons licensing for my photographic work (see Creative Commons: A Great Concept, I’ll Never Employ), but I do recognize it has value in some contexts (see EXIF and Beyond: Lawrence Lessig Interview). A recent development caught my eye that highlights one of the weaknesses of the Creative Commons model. That weakness is that the system of Creative Commons licensing is only as good or reliable as those that use it properly. If those using Creative Commons licensed images that don’t follow the license, the honors based system breaks down and becomes useless if not a detriment to the photographer releasing their work under it.
The latest story exemplifying this weakness comes from Corey Doctorow improperly using Creative Commons licensed photographs by Aaron Landry on the Boing Boing web site. To date Corey Doctorow has been a staunch advocate of Creative Commons and has written on the subject several times, often being referenced on the Creative Commons blog. If one of Creative Commons most staunch supporters doesn’t use it properly then what is the likelihood the average person will?
An Example of Creative Commons Not Working - Aaron Landry
Of course the next question raised based on Aaron’s licensing terms is Boing Boing a commercial site? Is the placement of advertising on the site enough to warrant identifying it as a commercial site and thus making commercial use of his photography? Joshua Benton shares an interesting experience in trying to determine the Creative Commons perspective to a similar question he raised sometime ago. Unfortunately Creative Commons clarifies little on what is considered “Commercial Purposes”. This exposes yet another weakness of Creative Commons… an organization working to better define and protect image use, but still stuck in limbo on making the call or just unwilling to make the call on certain definitions. How is this an improvement over the ambiguity of copyright use and legal definition we see in our legal system?
Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, Aaron Landry, Boing Boing, photo, photography, licensing
This past week Adobe launched beta of Photoshop Express, a little over 1 year since Adobe announced its intention to put Photoshop online (see Photoshop In A Software As A Service (SaaS) Model?). Unfortunately for Adobe what proved to be most noteworthy about this new application is not its functionality, but the rights grab they’re making for each image that is processed in the online application.
Adobe makes available a very short and general Terms of Use document for Adobe Photoshop Express users to review. What new Express users see initially during the registration process is only the higher level Adobe.com Terms of Use. Surprisingly Adobe buries their Photoshop Express Terms of Use in a link from their general Terms of Use document concealing the following information:
8. Use of Your Content
a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
For myself a few questions came to mind immediately after reading this.
1. “What the hell is Adobe thinking?”
2. “Are corporate lawyers really this out to lunch?”
3. “Why wasn’t greater thought put into supporting the rights of their users and managing the trust behind the Adobe brand?”
4. “Why would Adobe bury the meat of the Terms of Use as they’ve done?”
For the sake of full disclosure I have worked with creative agencies that have done work for Adobe in the past. It’s been a over 18 months since I last worked on anything Adobe related, but one thing is well known about Adobe… they take their brand very serious. By “brand” I mean the corporate perspective of what Adobe stands for and the reputation that they project. From a “brand” perspective this rights grab dramatically undermines the foundation in which their brand had been built upon namely “trust” and “empowering the creative professional”.
I’d like to think that Adobe’s lawyers made a mistake, but knowing how corporate lawyers work every clause of a contract is meticulously reviewed and approved. Nothing a corporate legal team does is an accident. Someone defined, reviewed and approved the terms with a lot of thought. What is certain is that effort was not brought in line with those that manage Adobe’s brand and products. With out a doubt Adobe’s staff was likely under the gun to produce and to give credit where credit is due… to turn out a product like this in a little over a year is an impressive feat. I have the greatest respect for Adobe to accomplish this, but with out hesitation I can say that Adobe really dropped the ball with their Terms of Use. In this day and age as an amateur or professional creative it is nearly impossible to not use Adobe software on a project. To this point an implicit bond and trust has been in place between Creatives and Adobe. If you can’t trust Adobe then who can you trust?
To quote Adobe from their Acquisition of Macromedia FAQ:
“What is Adobe’s mission?
Our mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information. By acquiring Macromedia, we are strengthening this mission by making it easier for customers to create, manage, and deliver their ideas and engage with information of all types — in print, on the web, in video, and across mobile devices. We believe in enabling powerful, effective, and meaningful digital experiences across multiple operating systems in the broad span of diverse industries we serve.”
Adobe consistently walks a fine line on many issues facing their customers and partners, but in this instance they have egregiously treaded on their customers rights. To give Adobe credit they’ve recognized their mistake and are trying to make right as noted in John Nack’s blog post A note about PS Express terms of use. None the less once treaded on users undoubtedly will be and should be sensitive to this point and should rightfully keep a close eye even on Adobe.
I hope that Adobe is able to avoid making this mistake twice and given their leading role in this industry perhaps to re-establish their trust and leadership they could take it upon themselves to spearhead defining thoughtful standards and Terms of Use that are respectful of the rights of Creatives; standards and terms that other companies might then adopt as the norm rather than the exception.
Now to watch how quickly Adobe moves to revise and correct their Terms of Use. How fast they move surely will be a sign of how serious they’re taking the issue.
Kudos to fellow JMG-Galleries blog reader Ben Bailey for raising my awareness to this development.
Technorati Tags: Adobe, Photoshop Express, rights, copyright, software, technology, web, terms of use, rights grab
