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*This is an editorial piece. I am not a lawyer. Research this material before making decisions based upon it. * Creative Commons is a great concept; often misunderstood, employed incorrectly and as a result gives those employing it a false sense of security. A few days ago I posted a video titled How Creativity Is Being Strangled By The Law where Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, spoke about the digital d

Food for thought from Larry Lessig on how current laws are hampering creativity and new media technologies. Larry Lessig is a great speaker whom I’ve seen present in person and have great respect for. His points are spot on in my opinion, but I often find myself thinking about what he says at least twice, once as your average Internet user and once as a photographer. The propagation of photography online on som

This past week had a lot of news worthy events that photographers and other creatives should be paying close attention to particularly in regard to Fair Use and Getty Image’s recent pricing announcement. Fair Use First the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a lobby group for technology companies, released a controversial report claiming that Fair Use adds more revenue to the economy than Copyrigh

This evening I attended the Fotovision.org lecture on “The Legal Landscape of Street Shooting“. The panel included: David Greene, Executive Director of “The First Amendment Project“ Pondra Perkins is a Staff Attorney and Environmental Advocacy Fellow at “The First Amendment Project“ James Wheaton, co-founder of the “The First Amendment Project“ This was by far one of th

Something I meant to share last Friday that ties in my previous posts on copyrights. The following case both exemplifies the impact of copyrighting and not copyrighting your photography. Appeals Court Confirms Photographer’s Rights in Case – imaginginfo.com Amazing to think that there could be any claim that using an image in a collage is acceptable after agreeing to a previous licensing agreement definin

This weekend I had the opportunity to watch “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” and I really enjoyed it. Although focused on movies and the film industry the topics of censorship, copyright and new technology are quite relevant to photographers. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend renting it. One of the first thoughts I had after watching the movie was my realization that I had a love-hate relationsh

For those of you that are unaware today is the first day that the Library of Congress is accepting applications to Beta test a new electronic submission system. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be selected to take part. It will definitely make my life easier and will speed the process by which I register my photographic work. It should also be noted that one of the benefits of electronic submissio

To date I’ve made two posts on Flickr: * The Dark Side of Flickr: Photo Phishing By Corporate America * Flickr + _Rebekka + Availability of High Resolution Images = Nightmare Today I read about two more stories of photographers images being stolen and used for commercial purposes. * A fourteen year old’s self-portrait being lifted off Flickr for use on a porn DVD * In Germany a political party lifts a pho