Blue Planet Photography

For when you take your laptop on your camping/backpacking trip - memory card with built-in wireless:

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4154410

$99 for 2GB SD
Only available for SD now. No indication whether it will expand to Compact Flash, but I think it’s only a matter of time. SD is the most common memory used in cameras, so it’s logical they would start there.

Professional associations are good. They are best when they are responsive and are powerful enough to get things done. Yesterday, I reported on the TOS of the new Adobe online offering (beta) of Photoshop Express and how the TOS contained wording to the effect that they “owned” any uploaded content.

I’m a member of the Stock Artists Alliance (www.stockartistsalliance.org) and this issue was brought up in our forum, which is how I found out about it. One day later and following contact with Adobe, they are changing the TOS stating the wording describes things they would never do.

Boilerplate. You’ve gotta hate it.

Thank you SAA for your prompt response and your influence within the photography industry.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Adobe announced it’s online beta version of Photoshop Express, which provides limited image processing online for photo sharing, etc. You can check it out at www.photoshop.com/express.

HOWEVER, it’s highly recommended you read the terms of service VERY carefully. And be advised, there are 3 linked documents of terms you need to read, not just the summary page that the initial link brings up. Here’s the gist through excerpts (remember my recent post about contests?):

“You agree to use the Services and the Materials only for purposes that are permitted by the Terms and any applicable law, regulation, or generally accepted practices or guidelines in any applicable jurisdiction (including any laws regarding the export of data or software to and from the United States or other applicable countries) (“Law”). ”

and

“Except as indicated to the contrary in any applicable Additional Terms, Adobe hereby grants you a license to view, download and print Materials provided by Adobe (“Adobe Materials”) and any Materials provided by Users (“User Content”), except for Shared Group Content, subject to the following conditions:

1. You may access and use the Adobe Materials and User Content solely for personal, informational, non-commercial and internal purposes, in accordance with the Terms;
2. You may not modify or alter the Adobe Materials or User Content;
3. You may not distribute or sell, rent, lease, license or otherwise make the Adobe Materials or the User Content available to others;
4. You may not remove any copyright or other proprietary notices contained in the Adobe Materials or User Content; and
5. You may not copy or distribute any photos, graphics, audio or video (“Images”) in the Adobe Materials or User Content apart from their accompanying text. “

BUT (and this is a very large BUT - my bold emphasis):

“Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.”

What does this mean? You can upload your photos to process, store and share. You cannot use any other content other than your own (unless the other users specifically state their photos are in the public domain, you can’t use any of Adobe’s content. But, by uploading your photos you grant Adobe permission and license to use your photos in any way they please, which means to license them to others (without payment to you), use them on their (Adobe’s) packaging, advertising, website, magazines, whatever they choose (without payment to you), FOREVER and ever.

These terms are similar to a neighborhood covenant stating if you park your car on the street or in your driveway you grant your neighbors the right to drive your car whenever they want, wherever they want, to keep it for as long as they want, even to sell it or rent it out to someone outside the neighborhood, repaint it, wreck it, return it with the tires or other accessories missing or with an empty gas tank, all without any compensation to you.

So, if you choose to use this service, be very careful what image files you upload. For the professional, this is very important (not likely that many pros will use this service, though), and even for the amateur this is a big deal. The wording in the terms of service (And Adobe here is not alone, you need to check other TOSs carefully as well; Facebook is another that has this wording, Flickr and MySpace as well). You can’t even watermark your images because the wording above gives Adobe (and whomever else displays this type of wording in their TOS) the right to remove it without penalty.

Amateur photographers, whether they care about making money from photography or not, should be aware that companies using their images for commercial purposes should pay for that use.

Reading reams of legal terminology is not an enjoyable task. But, doing so can save you a whole lot of grief down the road. Nobody is looking out for you but yourself. Pay attention.

Since 2006, various entities, including the U.S. Copyright Office have been trying to figure out what to do with Orphan Works. Legislation to allow companies to use any work found to be “orphan”, after minimal attempts made to contact the creator, was defeated. New legislation is back and threatens the livelihood of every person who creates intellectual property. This is a long post, but it’s worth the read and taking the time to do the research. Follow the links and learn more about what forces are gathering to make it more difficult for you and your heirs to make a living from your creative works. At the bottom of this post are several links. Check them out, it’s for your own good.

What is Copyright?

From the U.S. Copyright Office:

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

What is an Orphan Work? The term refers to an original work which continues to be protected within its term of copyright but the author/creator/copyrightholder cannot be located by someone who wants to use the work and seeks to contact the copyright holder for permission to use the work. This inability to contact the copyright holder might be due to there being no reator information attached to the work (signature, copyright registration, embedded digital signature, etc.), so the creator is not known, and/or there being no current contact information for the creator of the work or his or her heirs or assigns, or the copyright has passed to another entity (corporation/publisher, etc.) and that copyright holder no longer exists so the status and contact information is unknown.

Posted with permission (response to the Illustrators Partnership statement on Orphan Works
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00261):

The authors raise several good points in their
statement to Congress, especially:

“And, many of the images to be affected by these
proposals will be works created since 1976, when
the current copyright act was passed. That law
promised artists that their art would be
protected even if it was not marked and
registered. Yet if the Copyright Office proposals
become law, any unmarked picture created in
compliance with the 1976 law will become an
instant orphan. Countless rightsholders will be
penalized for not having done over the last 30
years what the law never required them to do.”

Also, this general statement form the Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership[

“Promoting” Orphan Works

by The Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership
March 14, 2008

Yesterday the House subcommittee on Intellectual
Property held their first hearing on new Orphan
Works legislation. Note the title:

“Hearing on Promoting the Use of Orphan Works:
Balancing the Interests of Copyright Owners and Users”
<http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=427>http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=427

Balance, however doesn’t seem to be part of the
Orphan Works juggernaut. Indeed, after this
hearing, we can no longer assume that the U.S.
Copyright Office is an advocate for the
protection of creators’ rights. As they wrote on
page 14 of their original Orphan Works Report:

“If our recommendation resolves users’ concerns
in a satisfactory way, it will likely be a
comprehensive solution to the orphan works situation.” (our emphasis)

But how can any copyright law be “comprehensive”
if it makes millions of copyrights, no matter how
valuable, available to users, no matter how
worthy, under a system that would introduce
permanent uncertainty into the business lives of creators?

Private Sector Registries
Since the last bill died in committee in 2006,
the advocates of this legislation have promoted
the creation of private commercial registries. On
January 29, 2007, a lead attorney for the
Copyright Office warned us that under their plan
any work not registered with a private sector
registry would be a potential orphan from the moment it was created.

This means you would not only have to register your published work, but also:

­ Every sketch or note on every page of every sketchbook;
­ Every sketch you send to every client;
­ Every photograph you take anywhere, anytime,
including family photos, home videos, etc.;
­ Every letter, email, etc., professional, personal or private.

This Would End Passive Copyright Protection:
Under existing law the total creative output of
any “creator” receives passive copyright
protection from the moment you create it. This
covers everything from the published work of
professional artists to the unpublished diaries,
letters and family photos of the average citizen.

But under the Orphan Works proposal, none of this
material would be covered unless the creator took
active steps to register and maintain coverage
with a commercial registry. Failure to do so
would “signal” to infringers that you have no interest in protecting the work.

The Registration Paradox:
By conceding that their proposals would make
potential orphans of any unregistered works, the
Copyright Office proposals would lead to a
registration paradox: In order to “protect” work
from exposure to infringement, creators would
have to expose it on a publicly searchable registry. This would:

­ Expose creative work to plagiarists and derivative abusers;
­ Expose trade secrets and unused sketches to competitors;
­ Expose unpublished and private correspondence
to the public on the Orwellian premise that you
must expose it to “protect” it.

Yet registries will not be able to monitor
infringements nor enforce copyright compliance.
Even after you’ve shelled out “protection money”
to a commercial registry to register hundreds of
thousands of works, you still won’t be protected.
A registry would do nothing more than give you a
piece of paper. You would still have to monitor
infringements - which can occur anytime anywhere
in the world; then embark on an uncertain quest
to find the infringer, file a case in Federal
court, then prove that the infringer has removed
your name or other identifying information from
your work. Meanwhile all the infringer will have
to do is say there was no such information on the
work when he found it and assert an orphan works
defense. This will be the end result of trying to
“resolve the users’ concerns” at the expense of time-tested copyright law.

Coerced registration violates the spirit and
letter of international copyright law and
copyright-related treaties. And because this bill
would effectively eliminate the passive copyright
protection afforded personal correspondence,
family photos, etc. it would tear one more
slender thread of privacy protection from the
fabric of fundamental rights we currently take for granted.

We urge Congress to carefully reconsider the
unintended consequences of this radical copyright proposal.

­ Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Board
of the Illustrators’ Partnership

More references:

Overview of the Orphan Works issue

Stock Artists Alliance Orphan Works Blog

Hearing on Promoting the Use of Orphan Works: Balancing the Interests
of Copyright Owners and Users
http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=427

Language in the actual bill
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.5439:

Executive Summary And Prepared Statement Of Victor S. Perlman
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/Perlman080313.pdf

News and Commentary from the Copyright Clearance Center on Orphan Works
http://oncopyright.copyright.com/

Summertime is contest time. Every magazine, organization, and company, it seems, offers some form of photography contest. Contests can be a way to receive notoriety for your photography and, possibly, to win some great prizes. However, you need to be on the alert for the Fine Print which can spell the end to your great photo (at least as far as you are concerned).

There are, in my opinion, three classes of photo contest:

1. Professional. This contest provides a venue for professional photographers to receive awards and notice by their peers and industry clients. Contests of this type can propel an unknown photographer into regular paying gigs. However, some of these contests are more or less just for vanity and have no influence on a photographer’s career. Choose wisely.

2. Commercial. This type of contest is operated by magazines and manfucturers, less to promote your photography than to promote their product. Often, the winning photograph is published in a special issue or used on product packaging. Winners receive products, vacations, money, or other prizes. This type of contest appeals more to the amateur photographer than the professional.

3. Nature/organization. Non-profit, government, and for-profit nature and environmental agencies, organizations and companies use contests primarily to involve the public and create awareness. Some of these contests also have a commercial component, but most winners receive publication, calendars, discount admissions/park passes, etc. These are “feel good” contests in which the entrant feels they are participating in or helping a cause they are interested in.

In each of these cases there are rules of submission. Most people read very carefully the requirements for submitting images, the size, medium of submission (prints, files, transparencies), information required for each submission (name, address, phone #, caption and title, etc.), deadline, and entry fee.

More often than not, the Fine Print is skipped over. It’s only legal mumbo jumbo after all. Standard fare for every contest, right? Wrong.

Some contests are created, it seems, for the sole purpose of generating a pool of images that can be used for advertising, product labeling, promotion, etc. When you read the fine print, you can run into statements that give up all rights, even your copyright, to the company if you win. Often, just by entering the contest you grant the company/organization the right to use your image in any way they see fit, even if you don’t win anything. Other rights granted are the right of the contest holder to sublicense your image. That means they can license the use of your image to another company or to whomever they want without further compensation to you. They could submit your image(s) to a stock agency and reap license fee benefits for years to come. You’ve signed over your right to that image. It no longer belongs to you and could actually be sued if you try to use it or even post it on your website. You could enter a calendar contest and end up seeing your photo on a cereal box, for example. With no payment or credit given.

I’ve always told people to look closely at the fine print. Camera clubs seem to be especially vulnerable to contests. The competitive nature of many clubs feeds the desire to be noticed, so many amateur camera club members enter contests hoping for that recognition without spending a few minutes to check things out more closely.

In the past couple years, photography associations and other groups have been trying to root out these bogus contests and remove the aggregious rights-grabbing verbage. Even professional contests are not immune. Recently, the prestigious Photo District News photo contest was forced to change some wording to give back the photographer’s control of their entry images.

So, what do you look for? Here are a few examples of the types of wording to avoid when entering a contest. There are variations, but you’ll see the pattern. Pro-Imaging has even gone as far as issuing a Photographer’s Bill of Rights in relation to contests. It’s worth checking out.

Wording to look for - the scary Fine Print:

Example #1:

“By submitting your image(s) to [company], you agree that such image(s) and the accompanying information will become the property of [company] and you grant [company] and their sublicencees permission to publicly display, reproduce and use the images in any form or media for any and (all editorial and related promotional purposes) purposes. You also warrant that (i) the image(s) is(are) your original work, or is properly licensed, and does not violate the copyright or any other personal property right of any third party. Your submission also allows [company] to edit, crop, or adjust the colors of the image(s) on an as needed basis.”

Example #2:

“You retain all rights to any photograph you submit - including ownership if applicable - other than those rights licensed in the next sentence. By entering the contest, you hereby grant to the [company] (i) non-exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and publicly perform the photographs you submit to the [company] and (ii) the right to use your name, city, state, and country of residence in promotions and other publications.”

Example #3:

“Without limitation, you further agree that, if your photo(s) is/are selected, [company] may utilize your photo(s) for marketing and promotional purposes in all territories in perpetuity in any media. [company] is under no obligation to use photo(s) submitted to “Photo Contest”. [company] is under no obligation to include credits with photo(s) selected for use in its marketing and promotional materials;”

Example #4:

“Individuals may retain copyrights to their work, but it is expressly understood and agreed to that by submitting an entry to [contest], the entrant gives permission to [company] to edit, publish, distribute, and republish photos in any medium or form. When possible, [company] will notify contestants whenever further use of photos is anticipated.”These are just a few examples, but I think you get the picture. The most common line I see is (i) in Example #2 where you grant the “world-wide, non-exclusive, royalty-free….” use of your image to the company to do with it whatever they please. But, luckily, you still retain the copyright (little good that does). Check out the Pro-Imaging Bill of Rights and educate yourself about contest rules. Be more dilligent in protecting your rights when entering contests and avoid those that are simply excuses to collect free photos. When you do that, you’ll end up with a short list of contests that are actually useful to you, challenging, and worth entering.

In 2004 (or thereabouts), Enrico Casarosa, an artist in San Francisco, was inspired by a bachelor party Pub Crawl to create SketchCrawl, where the basic idea is “to record nonstop everything I could around me with my pencil and watercolors.” Going out all day by himself, sketchbook and watercolors in hand, Enrico explored his surroundings, opening up his senses and awareness. He soon decided it would be more fun to include others and SketchCrawl was born, inspiring sketch artists the world over to get out and draw.

After reading about this, I, being a photographer, thought it would be great to expand the idea to another medium. So, I’m organizing PhotoCrawl, here in Boise, Idaho.

In conjunction with the SketchCrawl, I’d like to invite you all to attend a PhotoCrawl on the same day, March 29, 8am – noon. The PhotoCrawl is based on the idea behind SketchCrawl. It involves exploring a location, photographing anything and everything that attracts your eye. It’s a sort of free-association event to help you improve your “camera vision”, meet other photographers, and have a great time. There will be time to get feedback and help from me as well as other participants if you have questions about camera operation, composition, filters, lenses, tripods, Sudoku, particle physics…..

The format of the PhotoCrawl I’m putting together will be a loose route through downtown Boise and meeting at Old Chicago for lunch (if you wish) at noon. I’ve heard that the SketchCrawl group may meet us there as well.

We’ll meet for the start at the corner of 10th & Main (next to the Idanha Hotel), in Boise, at 8am. I’ll have a general route picked out, and maybe even a “scavenger hunt” type list to help with inspiration. We’ll end at noon at Old Chicago for lunch and discussion. The SketchCrawl group is also meeting at the same place and time and might also meet up with us for lunch. So, it will be an artist’s day all around.

I’m planning to hold a PhotoCrawl in the same time frame as SketchCrawl, every two months. They will occur in different locations to provide a wide variety of experiences to participants. The first is in the city of Boise, the next might be in a more natural setting, and so on.

If you’d like to participate, let me know or just show up. Photographers of all skill levels are welcome.