Some “factoids” for you

For a little pre-summer fun. Check out this link.

Not a lot of bells and whistles, but kind of amusing, to see the errors we make in common phrases.

This fits with photoblawg because whether you are a journalist or a lawyer, your communication skills make all the difference in getting your point across.

I myself will be checking back with this Website (yes, it is supposed to be capitalized):

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors

One that I always struggle with: judgment

Covering the Conventions? — Write this down

If you are covering the conventions, you should know about a wonderful resource that the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press has every convention cycle: 24-hour convention legal hotline for journalists. According to their website, the RCFP has provided this service for every convention cycle for the last 36 years.

Credentialed journalists who face detention and arrest can call the hotline for legal help. There are different numbers for Republican and Democratic Conventions, but both numbers, and an informative flier that definitely should be printed out and brought to the convention is at this link:

http://www.rcfp.org/conventions/index.htm

The flier is jam-packed with useful notes. Please print it out and bring it with you. Read it on the plane. It has great insight into the arrest procedures, bonding, etc.

Why all the fuss about journalists and arrests at conventions? You can read this story about journalists arrested in the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

Hopefully we won’t see a repeat of that mess. But whether you are credentialed media, traditional, student, freelance, blogger, be aware of the potential for problems and be prepared with a way to deal with it. Above all, remain calm and professional- annoyed cops often go overboard and being legally right doesn’t matter much if you miss the story because you are stewing in a jail cell.

Here are the hotline numbers:

Democratic Convention Hotline: (303) 376-2404

Republican Convention Hotline: (651) 238-1884

More info from the flier:

• The MEDIA HOTLINE should not be used for disputes over credentials or problems unrelated to your news coverage of the convention. You may call the Reporters Committee’s regular hotline, (800) 336-4243, if you have other credentialing or access issues.
• Non-credentialed reporters and protestors who are arrested may not use this MEDIA HOTLINE, but may instead contact the People’s Law Project of the National Lawyers Guild at (303) 830-0277.
• Questions about civil rights and liberties issues will be fielded by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado at (303) 777-5482, ext. 118.

Wow. $12 million copyright infringement case

Photo copyright award– Photo Attorney Carolyn E. Wright writes about a recent copyright infringement case that awarded the photographer $12 million in damages. It’s quite a tale, check it out. The case is Ordonez-Dawes v. Turnkey Props., Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24320 if you want to read it.

Here is a portion of the judgment:

1. Plaintiff is entitled to an award of actual damages and infringer’s profits, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. � 504(b), of $ 12,089,260.00. This amount consists of $ 58,760.00 in actual damages and $ 12,030,500.00 in lost profits.

Quick poll. Do you think the losers in this case will

• a) sue their attorney for malpractice,
• b) file for bankruptcy, close their company and open a new one,
• c) try to appeal, or
• d) flunk their Civ Pro class

In other copyright news, AP and bloggers are in dispute over the limits of fair use of quotes and links and AP is reportedly releasing guidelines soon about what it considers appropriate fair use. Bloggers, are of course, up in arms, but they probably don’t know what it is like to be laid off because the company that is paying you to create content is no longer the company that is profiting from that content.

While brief quotes and links seem to fall into fair use, there is an abundance of bloggers whose entire posts are someone else’s content, or who post entire articles and even photos and then try to claim that it is fair use. Rather than launch an army of lawyers, I recommend that bloggers simply paraphrase, and do a little of their own reporting. It will take less time.