Let’s face it. We all know that intellectual property (copyright) infringement is running rampant in this digital age. Musicians are suing for illegal downloading of their music, photographers are complaining of their photos being stolen, and artists are afraid their work is being illegally printed.

One of the issues photographers and artists are currently facing is having someone download photos straight off of their websites and using them without permission. Just recently, there was an uproar over a New York Times reporter who admitted in an article to printing photos off of Flikr to decorate her house. She didn’t believe that she was violating any copyright laws and even encouraged others to do so, with obvious disregard to other people’s property.

In order to give a better idea of the concept of infringing on the work of artisans, I would like to use a few examples.

This is the original photo I took of the model.

Suppose the model didn’t like the way she looked so she asked someone else to “fix” some things for her. Is this copyright infringement? Unless the photographer gives permission for someone else to alter their work, it is considered copyright infringement.

Now suppose you are someone who just happens to “collect” (for lack of a better word) photos of women. You find a model you like, decide to change the photo up a bit by cropping a portion and changing the toning, then post it on a website or a blog. Is this copyright infringement? You bet it is. Just because the photo is altered doesn’t give you any rights to it. No amount of cropping and toning can make it yours.

Now suppose you see a picture of something you find on the internet and you would love to have a painting made of it. Maybe you want a few things changed up a bit like the colors. Maybe you’re an artist yourself and would like to paint it or maybe you pay another artist to make it into a work of art. Now you have violated copyright laws. Any use of an intellectual property such as an image, artwork, writing, etc., without the express permission of that person is copyright infringement. Plain and simple.

Suppose you are a model and you would like to enter some of your modeling photos in a contest. Unless you have permission from the photographer to do so, you could be violating copyright laws by submitting something that isn’t rightfully yours.

There are also a few grey areas that haven’t been covered. For example:

Suppose you are a photographer and you want to mimic the master works of Ansel Adams. You find the exact location of where Ansel stood, waited for the moon to rise and the clouds to form in the exact place, and you take a series of photos until you get the right one. Is this copyright infringement? No. You did not arrange the moon and clouds, you simply imitated a master’s work. Imitation is not infringement.

On the other hand, suppose you are a photographer and admire the work of someone else so you decide to copy the layout of the image. For example, the photo is very specific in the way certain items are arranged – perhaps there is a model with a very original pose with one leg around her neck, the other wearing a rubber boot, a rose on a table in a certain angle, lighting is set up just right, a particular book with its title shown is on the table under the rose, a fork is dangling from the model’s mouth, and there is a dead fish on the floor next to the rubber boot. This is someone’s original idea, it is very specific and nothing like anything that anyone else has done. You think it’s cool and want to try it out and copy it too. Would this be an infringement of the original person’s work? More than likely the photographer would win his case in a US Supreme Court because he could prove that his original idea had to be manipulated by human hands (as opposed to the Ansel Adams photo) in order to copy his work.

For photographers, I highly suggest displaying your name and/or website across everything you upload to the internet and only upload low resolution photos. This way if you find your work on someone else’s website you can prove it’s yours. As for those of you that think it’s okay to use someone else’s photos just because you see it on the internet, think again. It doesn’t hurt to ask someone for permission to use their work for yourself. We might even say yes.

© 2009 Shannon Hudnell

Twice within the last month I have had the unfortunate incident of finding out that someone had created an imposter myspace profile by copying and pasting my real information and photos onto the fakes. The imposters then proceded to use the profiles to spam people on my friends list with Acai Berry Juice websites. Within hours, I had both of the imposter profiles deleted, but it was time and aggravation involved.

Here is a copy of the screen shot I took of the first imposter on May 13th. You can see where they are using my actual copyrighted artwork, registered business name, age, location, and the link to my website goes to my actual website.

This is the spam that followed it:

The first incident was bad enough but when the second incident took place, I began to have a lot of questions. Am I being targeted randomly or is this being done by someone that knows me? Then I started to ask legal questions. What crimes have been committed? Here are a few answers I found.

Fraud – It is a crime to impersonate or deceive others for financial gain or advantage. The impersonator was illegally using a legitimate business to send spam links to their own business website. This could also include internet fraud and consumer fraud, which all have separate laws and various punishments in a court of law. Sometimes each state and jurisdiction has its own set of laws as well.

Copyright Infringement – This is the unlawful use of copyrighted material. They stole my photo, and it even had my name typed across it! What balls.

Depending on the outcome of this situation and state and federal laws, other crimes that some of this may fall under are harassment (this incident happened twice by the same company), and criminal harassment.

Now does this mean I’m going to pursue this? Probably not. As far as I can tell, no harm has been done to my business. But I will tell you it was a lot of aggravation. I had to prove to myspace who I am and send them of a copy of my business license. And remember that with myspace, things don’t happen at the snap of a finger because they are limited on employees.

Also, I do not know who the perpetrator is. It could very well be someone in China, which basically means there is nothing I can do about it. In fact, the website leftcool.com is registered with someone in China, and normmust.com no longer exists. More than likely, these were websites that also mimicked Acai Berry Juice and were actually geared toward identity theft. But that doesn’t mean that is the person who is doing it is the same person that is on the registry. Anyone can register a website nowadays anonymously or under another registrant’s name, so it very well could be someone here in the U.S. or even another country doing the dirty deeds.

There needs to be some serious changes with internet laws. Too much is out there and too many scammers are abusing it. If anyone, especially a legal expert, would like to contribute to this, please do so.

© 2009 Shannon Hudnell