News of the Day!

Almost four years after AFP and Getty stole stole 8 of https://photolicioux.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpDaniel Morel’s Haiti earthquake photos, the photographer WINS:

“After a week of drama and humiliation in court, Agence France Presse and Getty Images had been ordered to pay Morel $1.22m damages for wilful copyright infringement and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

Go HERE to check out the whole story!

Winners: Daniel Morel with attorney Joseph Baio,

photographer Phyllis Galembo and attorney Emma James.

Photo by Jeremy Nicholl

No free use of Twitter photos!

Remember our little talk on media using Instagram content without any proper credits? All safely stored here.

Good news! A judge ruled that news agencies cannot freely use, publish or distribute Twitter photos without the specific permission of the photographers who took them. (I know! It;s not Instagram, but one step at a time!)

This is the latest development of a 2010 case when mass media (from Agence France Press to the Washington Post) published the image of a woman trapped beneath rubble after an earthquake in Tahiti, captured by photographer Daniel Morel.

Not only that did not have Morel’s permission to do that (and they didn’t pay him a ha’ penny, as a matter of fact), but once he sent out cease and desist letters, the AFP argued that there was no copyright infringement and launched a lawsuit against him for “antagonistic assertion of rights.” That’s a little bit too much, AFP!

Enough with all of that! District Judge Alison Nathan of Manhattan has issued a ruling that the use of Twitter photos without permission constitutes copyright infringement, and the case will go in court!

Eyes wide open on that! It is a firs, it will set up a precendent and it will have major implications for photographers worldwide!

Wall or Fame or Wall of Shame

Searching for fame, you wouldn’t want to be featured on this wall of shame: Photo Stealers!

What I find most hilarious is the fact that the thieves are no students, homemakers or amateur photographers looking for some ‘likes’ on Facebook, but they are all professionals with well-established businesses, merciless stealing from their fellows, commerical ads or world-wide famous photographers.

In other words, they are not even making difficult to be caught!

Marksta App – it watermarks your iPhone photos

You don’t want your Instagram pics flying around on the internet, and get shared on social networks without any credits? Watermark them!

Get Marksta App, developed by photographer John D. McHugh, especially for fellow photographers using iPhone cameras, interested in protecting the commercial value of their work, but also their moral rights.

Marksta gets quite creative, allowing users to choose from a variety of borders, fonts, sizes and colours.

More on Marksta in the British Journal of Photography.

Credits and Images

Speaking of uncredited images, Stephen Coles offers on his really cute blog Stüf Stuff advice on:

How to find the source of an uncredited image

I unfollow lazy leachers on Tumblr, Pinterest, and other platforms who don’t credit image sources or reblog uncredited images without doing the simple research to find their origin. Doing the research is often a quick and easy job with tools like TinEye or Google’s Search by Image. Here’s how:

1. Install Jarred Bishop’s excellent img-src bookmarklet, or a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Safari), or simply enter the image URL into Search by Image.
2. The largest or oldest image in the results is usually the first one posted on the web.

Of course, this method is not foolproof, but it works so often that there’s really no excuse not to credit image sources. Don’t break the chain of source information and don’t tolerate chain-breakers. You have the power to make the web a better place.

Photo by… Instagram

Reporting on the viral fires in Tasmania, The Age gives the credits for a heartbreaking photo to… Instagram!

“Tim and Tammy Holmes had to take their grandchildren into the sea to escape the  flames. Photo: Instagram“

* Honest mistake or negligence, such behaviour might lead to a common media practice consisting in using images shared by the public on social networks without the proper credits.

Later edit: I reckon the credits should go to Tim Holmes (grandfather of the family featured in the pic), as a very similar image in terms of composition, colors and exposure was credited to him today (9 January) by The West Australian: