 William Koplitz |
Photographs on the WWW The www was developed as a commercial forum and I don't believe the 1st Ammendment protects anyone here. - A photographer is not allowed to show a photograph just because he or she has done the photography. You need to apply the same rules that you would apply to a print advertisement. There is no editorial on the web, it is all advertising and property and people need a signed release. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Do you get releases everytime you show somebody a 4x6 of a picture you took?
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Jon Close |
>>"There is no editorial on the web, it is all advertising and property and people need a signed release. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this."<< My thought is you couldn't be more wrong. There is much editorial content on the web: news, magazines, e-zines, political sites, blogs, personal websites and galleries, etc. Obviously, images used on a commercial site should have proper releases. But not all sites are commercial or advertising.
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William Koplitz |
All these things on the web: news, magazines, e-zines, political sites and most galleries exist to sell something which makes them commercial entities. If it's .com it's commerce, if it's .gov it's government and .org is a combination. Even f*company tries to sell shirts. Before there was the www the internet was gopher, news servers and bbs, and all these sites baned any mention of commerce and selling. If you did, you'd get flamed. The www was set up to sell things and allow commerce to exist on the Internet.
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x |
William, You may display your work without releases. I display my work on my website, but I am not selling those images. I am not advertising, I am displaying images for viewing. It's simple in my mind. If someone wants to sue me, go ahead. I can put my images up in a store, restaraunt, museum, or anywhere as long as they are not for sale. And, as long as I am not profiting. And, I think the profit angle is where you are going. But, anytime you display your work, you are advertising. So, I think it's pretty clear that work may be displayed as long as IT is not for sale, i.e., that specific image. Jerry
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Wing Wong |
Hmm... the www developed as a means of sharing information the linking aspect was derived from SGML and Hypercards, hence Hypertext. The online aspect was a natural progression of the original projects headed by DARPA in creation of the ARPA net for intercommunication between the various military and educational institutes. This was later expanded to create the Internet, a series of high speed backbones interlinking large univeristies and research centers. Eventually, as the desire for people to access this information grew, various services and protocols arrived: ftp, telnet, gopher, news, uucp, email(actually, this existed in a primitive form in the original arpanet), and eventually, http(www). The "html" or "web" method was meant to make the system easier to manage and display. The association of web pages with that of published pages lended itself well to advertisement and commerce, though the original intentions was not commerce, but free trade of ideas and knowledge. When advertisements first started appearing on the net, there was an outcry at the university where I was attending. Most newcomers to the internet now see it as having been always commercial. Some remember when it was not. Yes, people in IRC, BBS, MailLists(majordomo,etc), Newsgroups, etc all hated people coming in with advertisements and early forms of "spam". Regarding the original question, the 1st amendment rights apply to all forms of non-commercial speech. Even if that speech is carried out through a commercial means: buying radio time, buying webspace, or buying subscribers, the speech is protected if the content and intent of the speech is non-commercial. You have the right to express yourself and people have the right to ignore you. But people may decide to listen to what you have to say. The fact that this interchange happens over the internet, the phone lines, or on printed paper does not make it any less so. What differs between printed speech and internet speech is in terms of copyright law. More specifically, the clause regarding first publication and first replication/copy. Because the net is an ever changing, transient, medium, some have argued that first publication online has not been fully tested legally. However, this does not overlap with the idea of 1st amendment rights. This is a medium for communication. So long as your speech is non-commercial in nature, it is protected under the 1st amendment. Having said that, given the state of things throughout history, the ability to exercise your 1st amendment rights is sometimes an uphill battle. Wing Wong
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Don't think there's not a newspaper out there that has a web site that dosen't start with www. And by your reasoning, having newspapers with pictures in them, freedom of the press, and having to buy a newspaper instead of them being given away for free, is one big lawsuit that nobody's taken up for how many decades now? Get real.
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Jon Close |
Point of order, the 1st Amendment concerns only limiting the Federal government's ability to regulate speech. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." It does not concern distictions between commercial v. non-commercial speech, and it does not concern copyrights, fair-use, property rights, etc.
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William Koplitz |
Photojournalists working for newspapers don't have any rights to the images they have made, those are all owned by the publication under work for hire laws. That's just the way it is. The rights to publish other images from wire sources like AP and AFP are paid for by the publication. The National Geographic has been defending itself in court against contract photographers who believe the publication owes them money because they published their photographs on a compilation CD without purchasing additional rights. The world wide web is not the free press and it still seems like the only items that get a free ride here are parody. Even though your site appears to be non commerical in nature, is it really? Aren't you really selling something, either services or actual prints or publication rights. I'm not sure, but thank you Wing for your response.
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Jef Franklin |
One rarely sees a newspaper that that does not sell ad space. Those that do not are not free. Most gallerys sell the works (not the rights to reproduce them) that they display. Both venues do not require a release. Both utilize the WWW. Jounalist and artist have to eat. Even though News and art are seldom free they are still protected. Even a photo documentery sold in bookstores is protected. The 1st Ammendment states that we freedom of speech. It doesn't that speech has to be free.
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John A. Lind |
William, "Commercial" use as applied to photography is basically advertising or something so closely associated with a commercial product or service that it constitutes the same thing as advertising (e.g. the cover photo on a corporation's annual report to its stockholders). A photograph inside Time Magazine is clearly protected by 1st Amendment rights in the U.S. (which don't protect against libel or slander claims). One *might* argue that the cover photograph is used to help "sell" the magazine on the newstand . . . and *that* has been the subject of some rhetorical debate. If forced to wager on it, I'd bet huge that it's covered just like every photo inside is because it also is presenting something "newsworthy." My display of imagery on the WWW, here or elsewhere, is considered either editorial or artistic, and as such *IS* protected by 1st Amendment rights . . . provided I did not encroach on private property without permission, or commit blatant invasion of privacy in making the photograph . . . privacy meaning one would expect privacy in the location it was made . . . and that is not as many places as you might think . . . especially for things considered "newsworthy" which has a much more loose definition than most might think). BTW, a signed release is **NOT** "required" except to protect yourself from civil lawsuit over use of something for commercial purposes (i.e. commercial advertising) that is not yours . . . or in the case of models (including artistic ones) who have legitimate rights to control use of their likeness for anything that does not fall into the "newsworthy" category. -- John Lind
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William Koplitz |
John, I'm still not certain that the www gives me any protection to display any images without releases. Currently I present my portfolio to a potential client and the images that are contained are all protected under free speach laws, plus the fact that I'm not really meeting the criteria of publishing. I want to put my portfolio on the Internet and but had to stop and think. Putting photographs on line meets the requirements of "publishing," therefore, I conclude that the laws that govern publishing apply to the www. Not all the samples in my portfolio can go on the www. I've put the images I'm not sure of behind a login to protect them from being published - not knowing if this is really a good way to "unpublish" them and reasoning that if someone were really interested they would log in. my site 36exp.com
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Do you count your porfolio as advertising yourself?
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William Koplitz |
I'm advertising my services and style with samples, nothing in my portfolio is for sale. More than that, it's a question of publishing. When images are put on the world wide web they are being published.
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
In an ad, the image isn't for sale either, it's the product. Your product is you taking pictures. You use an image in your portfolio to make money taking pictures. So why do you not get releases for your portfolio when you use them to advertise yourself?
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William Koplitz |
Because there is no requirement to have releases for things in my portfolio- anything can be in there, this covered under the 1st ammendment and showing a portfolio to individual/s is not publishing. If I publish things in my portfolio for advertising purposes I need a release just like everyone else. So this is the problem, does putting things on the web fall under the same publication rules as print publishing?
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
So how is showing a portfolio to advertise yourself okay, but having an easier way of typing in a website address to do the same thing, not okay? You said it's all advertising on the web. You take a portfolio to a potential client, you are advertising are you not? You can't do the same thing by telling a potential client, go to this website?
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x |
William, Although I believe that Gregory is correct and you are OK to put your images on the web for display, if this is something you are truly worried about, I would consult an attorney, who has vast expertise in this area. They may have some very good advice for protecting yourself. We could banter all day about this subject, but there is probably alot of grey interpretation that requires knowledge about previous cases in 1st amendment rights in practice, copy rights, and intellectual property rights. Jerry
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