Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Photographer Kristi Hedberg called me earlier this afternoon, asking me to take down what I thought was a rather artful photograph she had taken of Lauren Bradley, assistant to the Asheville city manager, and her pregnant belly. My original post is here.
Hedberg, in a fairly reasonable manner, said I hadn’t been authorized to take a screen shot of the photo of Bradley, and she said she was upset that I had published it on this blog. She offered to let me post another photo of Bradley, which I declined.
I explained that I wasn’t trying to invade anyone’s privacy or be malicious in any way. In fact, I was complimentary of both Hedberg and Bradley. After more cajoling, I gave in and removed the offending photo (which Hedberg has since taken off her blog.)
Here’s what happened: Hedberg had published a series of about eight photos of Bradley on her blog for all the world to see. They were the artful maternity photos you see a lot today — a proud mother-to-be draped in the woods, showing off her belly, or posed with hubby cradling the belly.
The photos were not published on a private site. Hedberg had even gone one step further and posted a photo of Bradley on flickr.com, a social networking site for photographers. With the photo, she linked back to her blog and the rest of the Bradley photos.
Here at Ashvegas, I stick to a pretty basic rule: I don’t censor content here. If I write it and put it out there, I take responsibility for it. So if you’re publishing content to the World Wide Web, know that I might find it and write about it. And know that you are, in fact, publishing something to the wide world.
I’m not even reading the other comments. Especially after I saw the words "intellectual property" in one of them. There’s no such thing. Copying a picture is also not "free speech."
I miss the old internet, where not only did no one care but they also generally didn’t pretend to know more than they actually knew they knew.
Great jumping jesus. I’m sorry I even came over to this blog. I was only looking for someone who might have posted about the hideous cat-with-arrow-through-head picture that WLOS had the large nads to run tonight.
I have to go cry now.
Mike, why don’t we take down the real bad boys, libraries.
I bet someone is copying someone’s work right now! Hell, hope they don’t learn something.
Is this what snarky feels like? Is it?! 🙂
All due respect, Ash, but it’s not very far, if at all, off base for what I contend: which was not about your use of the photo but about some of the "if it’s on the Internet, it’s free for the taking" comments. FWIW, I actually think you probably were on fine legal ground for what you did; I posted that you might not have wanted to be a legal test for it (and I think you were right for pulling it at the owner’s request), but your blog and your use of the photo therein seem to be relatively clearly in the realm of fair use. My issue is with the attitude that if someone puts some of their intellectual property on the Web site, that that eliminates that person’s right to determine what happens to that work, and that s/he should be happy to have it stolen (again, differentiated from fair use) because other people will see it.
thanks ashvegas chick, Gordon and Soni for your responses.
Mike, your hypothetical is not even close to a fair comparison. waaay off base.
On a completely different note, I‘d like to hijack this thread for a moment to make a rant of my own. Pregnancy, not family or motherhood which can be experienced without increasing the population, pregnancy itself is being blatantly marketed to American women, flying directly in the face of everyone‘s professed green mantra, and no one is talking about it.
With no offense to Ash meant, good riddance to “a rather artful photograph [of] her pregnant belly”. The statement “They were the artful maternity photos you see a lot today” makes my skin crawl.
Knowing what we know about brand marketing via celebrity, think about the current crop of breeder flicks, “bump-watch” hysteria, checkout rags, and blatantly fake pregnancies like that of Nicole Ritchie. Now think about the economic impact of population increase as opposed to population decrease, not just on consumption but the future impact more or less workers have on the labor/capital struggle. No wonder the financiers of print, screens large and small want America to have baby rabies.
I am 31, on a generational cusp. I know very few educated Gen X women (or men) with kids, and granted I don’t pal around with consumer replicators, but it seems as though almost all the Gen Y women I know have at least one. Gen X was the second generation to have access to the pill and legal abortions. To my eyes this shift bears the nefarious mark of so many of our ’conspiracy theories’ that are in fact actual, implemented conspiracies.
No amount of sustainable lifestyling can make up for actually increasing our numbers, even at the personal level. Now is when I always hear the howling chorus “So what are we supposed to do, just not have kids?” In my humble opinion, yes, we are supposed to, as an advanced and educated society with many family planning options, not replicate ourselves for the good of other species and our own until the Earth’s population decreases to a reasonable size of 1 billion or less. And yes, that is a project that will require the entire human race working in concert for several hundred years and it will be very bad for profit growth.
If you have the burning desire to nurture, adoption is great. Even better is viewing all human life, regardless of age, as something to be nurtured and cared for by all. Now that’s ‘green‘ parenting.
Sorry for the thread hijack.
I am pretty sure that the photog was upset that you were being snarky about Lauren and posted a picture that most people wouldn’t feel comfortable about being in the public eye. After all, she DID offer another picture of Lauren Bradley…she just wanted a say about how her client was being portrayed perhaps? Sounds like Hedberg was being reasonable and Ash decided to make it an issue…
sorry ash, seems a strange request to me as well.
we routinely feature local artists at blogasheville, as you know, and have never had anyone ask us to take it down before.
By the logic some are trying to apply, I should just be able to go into Malaprops, take some book without paying for it, then go make a photocopy of it and start handing it out to anybody I see. Maybe I could slip in some business cards of other authors or bookstores, to give the same impact as the photography ads Google’s put on this post. I showcase the work and the store, their profiles increase, and they get more people walking in to take books. The writing is excellent and the author should be grateful for the added exposure. After all, they just put it out there on a shelf for anyone to pick up, and now they want me to pay for it, too? Come on–they can’t have it both ways. If you want to sell books, just stay out of the damn retail business.
copy and paste and you’ve copied it……it’s that easy. don’t put stuff out there if you don’t want to take the risk of it being copied.
ash- i am with you. you rock.
Yeah, I surived the crash. And after defending the cheese-eating frogs, I decided to come to the aid of bloggers who are being smoked by photographers who forgot to get their models to sign a release form.
Liberte, Eagalite and Fraternite, yo.
I’m with Ash. If you put photos up at your blog, you ought to expect folks to republish them. We watermark any original work at ScruHoo, so others who see it will know where it came from.
The photos were lovely, by the way, and I think the photog is very talented. Free publicity, provided by the pic, the link, and the shoutout is a nice bonus Ash offered. He’s got the most well-trafficked blog in town, and the photog got free publicity.
I guess the subject of the photo was upset about it? Then maybe don’t give permission to put your image on the photog blog.
A to the P:
**And since you make ad revenue off the site (so I assume from your add banners), fair use doesn’t even apply to you in the first place.**
This is not actually true. Making money off of a blog doesn’t negate it’s ability to claim fair use, anymore than a college charging for classes or teachers getting paid to teach negates the ability of the teachers to use copyrighted materials via fair use for discussion, commentary and instruction.
Nor does being paid for paintings negate the fair use images from other artwork or copyrighted materials in the final piece, if the final piece is ruled to be transformative.
Fair use is only negated when the use of the image is solely or primarily to make money – such as imprinted on a tshirt for sale – not when money is made tangentially to the fair use of a piece for discussion and commentary, such as at an art appreciation class in a bar that makes money selling beer, etc. Or a post in a blog. The purpose of (at least this) blog is primarily commentary and only secondarily commercial. (I highly doubt Ash makes a living from his ad revenue, although I could be wrong.) Now, this might be different if this was a scraper blog whose sole purpose was to generate click-throughs. But even blogs with a primarily commercial slant (say, camera review blog with tons of camera-related ads) use images of their relevant topic (cameras that they’re reviewing) with relative impunity, since it’s still essentially in support of commentary about said camera.
The commercial nature of the medium in which fair use is claimed is increasingly considered less of an issue in the courts anyway, since "whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes," has recently been deemphasized in some Circuits "since many, if not most, secondary uses seek at least some measure of commercial gain from their use."[American Geophysical Union, 60 F.3d at 921]*
*snagged, via fair use, from Wikipedia, although that quote is widely available from other sources, as well.
judgeyall, lol! if only….
yeah, Im sure the money is just rolling in from the ad revenue.
Kiffin Rockwell… you survived that crash? I thought the Germans shot you.
anyway, welcome home, bro… what are you about 110 now?
claim fair use all you want. it doesn’t change the fact that it is not fair use and a violation of online copyright laws (yes Ash, they do exist).
And since you make ad revenue off the site (so I assume from your add banners), fair use doesn’t even apply to you in the first place.
Im with Ash on this. If anything, Kristi should have been THRILLED with the free positive PR, and just asked for a link.
Ashvegas did not print the freakin photo on a t-shirt or mousepad… he shared a piece of local art with his readers (who most likely would use Kristi’s services)
And it’s certainly your right, Ash, to post your own photos under a license that allows people to "nab" them. But it’s not the default. And the argument that "everybody steals my images so it’s OK for me to steal someone else’s" just doesn’t fly.
As for fair use, it seems you really _aren’t_ claiming it, otherwise you would have left the image as it was. Fair use is a tricky area, and who knows whether a court would agree that using one-eighth of a copyrighted collection on a commercial Web site (they’re not much, but those Google Ads make a difference) would fall under the protection of section 107.
Give me a break. The photographer presumably wants to make a living as a photographer — therefore she has a commercial website. Vegas showcases her work, thus increasing her profile and web hits. And she cries foul? You can’t have it both ways. If you want privacy stay off the damn interweb. It’s a shame, the photos were excellant and stunningly beautiful, and the photog would benefit from increased web traffic. Unless she didn’t tell her client/model that this might happen. Hmmm?
If a photographer has a website for commercial reasons, but wishes to have some posted photos remain private, they make the photos password restricted. This isn’t rocket science.
This issue just came up on CNN yesterday and the internet lawyer interviewed said that content on blogs and sites like flickr are fair game. Don’t post pictures you don’t want duplicated over the internet–you have no rights! Ash put the picture back up and stop being bullied by people who do not believe in free speech and quit being a mamby-pamby!
to everyone who has nabbed Ashvegas photos over the years and re-posted them elsewhere — i hope you’re reading these comments.
meantime, i’m claiming fair use.
Good call on removing the photo. People have this mistaken notion that just because someone posts something on the Web, it’s free for the taking. Problem is, there’s a little legal issue of intellectual property. I haven’t seen the Flickr image in question, but chances are, it’s marked "All Rights Reserved." (Even if not, copyright is created at the moment the picture is taken, so unless she posted it under one of the open Creative Commons licenses or something similar, it’s still not legal for someone else to use it.)
This isn’t an issue of censoring content. It’s an issue of a businesswoman protecting her property from being stolen. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a "private" site or Flickr. It was posted to be viewed in the way she decided to make it available, not for someone else to take it and post it on their own site.
you should’ve left it up. that chick is whack for busting your balls over doing what you do.
Well, yes, but very much a grey area as far as copyright goes. If you credited her work and had permission, that’s okay. Otherwise, it is not.
Just because it is out for all the world to see does not mean you can swipe it.
Publishing to the World Wide Web does not mean that all Copyright laws go out the window. If you check the photographers website you will see that she has publicly displayed the copyright for her work. Linking to her site for your viewers to see the images is your right as it is on the "World Wide Web", but screen capturing and posting here is not. The photographer had every right to ask you to remove the image. Just feel lucky that she gave you the chance before contacting her lawyer.
Ah, dammit. I missed it. Bobby said it was a real hottieshot.
Hey, they cut down that damn tree yet?
Just because you see something you like in a store that is open to the public, that does not give you the right to take it and walk out of that store without paying.
Photography is our product and we can display it on our websites, blogs and photography forums as we, the artists, choose fit. You can view it, link to our display (website/blog), but you have no legal right to copy, distribute or directly use it in any way.
Next time you are so inclined to comment on the lovely art of another photographer, try a nice link back to the original images on the blog. Easy enough and no harm done.