Shepard Fairey Drama Twist

Sometimes a lawsuit is just a lawsuit.

But sometimes it is a soap opera. Sometimes, a lawsuit is an attempt to shape the laws, an attempt to get the public to wake up and take sides. And sometimes there is a cliff hanging twist and turn every time you think it is safe to turn off the internet. Fairey v. Associated Press, is all of the above, and the case has all of the elements of a good drama (except sex): politics, money, theft, lies, and art.

In the latest twist, Fairey has admitted that he falsified evidence and attempted to destroy other evidence. AP has also issued a statement, stating that the Fairey’s lawyers are attempting to withdraw from representation of Fairey. To them, I say: “what did you expect from a thief.”

Bad news for the copyleft- their “poster-child” for fair use has almost certainly ruined his case. There is nothing like lying to the court and violating discovery to remove all sympathy a judge might have for your case. Furthermore, he could be sanctioned to the point that he looses his primary defense. No matter what happens, he looks very guilty.

On Another Note:

When researching this news, I noticed an interesting article from the EFF that explains how as a part of the countersuit, the AP is also making a claim under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act for stripping the metadata from the photograph (see item 137 and 182 of the counterclaim document). I was not aware of this, but this will be another interesting element of the case to follow closely if this does not settle. Removing metadata is a violation of the DMCA. And yet nearly every newspaper website in America removes metadata from photos that it publishes. I have long criticized this practice- it creates orphans. But if AP wins on the issue of removing the metadata, media lawyers will have to wake up about the practices of news organizations relating to preserving metadata.

On Yet Another Note:

As I mentioned, this case has many twists and turns. Few legal posts I have seen evaluate the Mannie Garcia claim that he is the rightful copyright holder of the photograph. Here is one great article about it, though.

I have chart on work for hire that I created earlier this year. Without knowing more facts about Garcia and his arrangement with AP, it is hard to work through it, but you might find it useful.

Interesting Related Documents:

Fairey’s Initial Complaint

AP’s Answer and Countersuit

Fairey’s motion to amend the claim (with the details about Shepard Fairey’s change in story)

Mannie Garcia’s Motion for intervention.

More documents from the case.

It’s photo week at the Supreme Court of the United States

Photographers should be paying attention to the Supreme Court this week…

Tasini continued…

Oral arguments were heard today in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. This case is connected to our old friend Tasini v. New York Times, which some say started the whole rights grabbing trends of the modern day newspaper contract. While this case won’t really have as much of an impact on photographers, it is interesting because of the connection. It involves the authority of the court over copyright cases and settlements when the rights holders haven’t registered their copyright. It also involves an enormous class of journalists. Here is a summary of the oral arguments (note to self: research why people keep hyphenating “freelancer”) and here is a transcript of the oral arguments.

If the court rules that a federal court cannot approve a settlement involving rights-holders who have not registered, it seems inevitable that this will affect the Google Books settlement.

The Dog-fight Video Case

In another case that is important to photographers, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday about whether or not a law that bans visual depictions of cruelty to animals is a violation of the First Amendment.

U.S. v. Stevens is the first case ever to be prosecuted under a federal law that bans any “depiction of animal cruelty” if such cruelty is illegal in the place where the depiction is created, sold or possessed.

It has been many years since the Court found that the government interest in preventing child pornography was so great that it overrode any First Amendment rights of the child pornographer, a rather appropriate finding. By making the expressive act illegal, the motive for the abuse is diminished. Child pornography involves abuse of a child and the photography itself is abusive. The law is clearly narrowly tailored and serves a compelling government interest.

This law is not so well orchestrated. For example, the defedant, Stevens, was not involved in any animal abuse, he merely edited together footage that he obtained from others.

While well intentioned (many attacks on the First Amendment are), I think this law is certain to be struck down. First of all, I don’t believe that our government truly has a compelling interest in preventing cruelty to animals. If it did, much of the way our nation produces meat would be illegal (yes, I am a vegetarian). Second, the law is in no way narrowly tailored. There are many possibilities of perfectly legal activity that could get a person caught up in this law. And there are loopholes that would make illegal a video or photograph of something that was legal where it occurred (say bullfighting in Spain). I once photographed a ritual sacrifice of a sea turtle in a Fijian village. It was gross. It was brutal and cruel. But it was important to document. Those pictures could get me in trouble with the feds under this law.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the list of hypotheticals the justices posed to the attorneys in this case. The article in the New York Times says it all.

The transcript, full of hypotheticals, is here.

An article about the NPPA signing an amicus brief urging the court to hold the law unconstitutional is here.

One of my favorite things to listen to is a Nina Totenberg report on Supreme Court arguments. Her review of this weeks oral arguments is available here.

Wedding photography disaster- protect yourself

This story about a wedding photographer in England who was sued for providing “shoddy” photography holds a few lessons, for both photographers and brides to be. For brides, do your homework and get a decent, and professional photographer. These photos, and the video as well, make me wonder if the couple looked at any examples of the photographer’s work before they hired him. Was this just a bad day? I can’t imagine.

For photographers, the lesson is that an important element of your contract is a determination of what happens if something goes wrong.  Disasters happen. Car accidents and family emergencies happen. Even good equipment, on rare occasion, fails. My contract, regardless of the client, has a limitation of liability that says if something does go wrong, my liability is only the amount paid to me. I guarantee my work, but I am not willing to foot the bill for a second wedding if someone doesn’t like my style. To have such a guarantee would force me to raise my prices significantly.

This is important, not because I expect my client to be unhappy- on the contrary, I have very happy clients. But photography is subjective. For example, the judge in the above article found that the photography was bad based in part on the fact that some heads were cut off, and some horizons were crooked. Some photos were out of focus. From a stylistic perspective, you might have award-winning images with heads cut off, crooked horizons and soft focus.

This brings up another point. I don’t know whether the photographer in the above case gave all his images to the bride, or only a selection, but as a rule, I ALWAYS provided only an edited selection. I learned the hard way to never provide my entire take to someone who is not a photography professional. Doing so is an invitation to be judged by your outtakes, which by definition, stink.

You could certainly take my worst outtakes from any event I have photographed, haul me before a judge, and get a judgment that I am a bad photographer. But that will never happen, because my job is not to make every frame I shoot perfect. My job is to to provide a selection of wonderful, unique images. That is what the client wants, and that is what the client gets.