Virginia Court Rules Copying Photos Found on Internet is Fair Use

[Dan Robinson]

Brammer v Violent Hues: The court ruled that finding a photo on the Internet and then using it without permission on a commercial website can be considered fair use.

https://petapixel.com/2018/07/02/court-rules-copying-photos-found-on-internet-is-fair-use/

This will be overturned when it is appealed, but this business of "transformative" fair use is getting out of control. By these extremely liberal interpretations, which are very popular among the non-content creating public and business sectors, almost nothing can be considered infringement.

The most prominent examples of the "transformative" claim include Buzzfeed's creation of viral top ten photo lists using stolen content and the Richard Prince "appropriation" cases:

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/27/ph...-suit-richard-princes-instagram-art-go-ahead/

Our collective input and voices will likely be needed to reverse this trend, particularly in the passage of the CASE act (Copyright Small Claims). The Federal district courts are not experts on copyright law, so decisions can vary wildly. Many of them are appealed to higher courts, where the low-level decisions are frequently overturned. This is of course very expensive to the photographer bringing the suit.

I can't stress enough how important it is to make your voice heard:

http://copyrightdefense.com/action

If this trend does not change, it would be adviseable to take all of your work offline and only post tiny thumbnails. I may be doing that myself soon.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Appeal is being filed:

https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2018/07/controversial-fair-use-copyright-ruling-faces-appeal.html

 

[Warren Faidley]

Just find the abusers and beat the crap out of them.

 

[Dave C]

This type of thing really gets under my skin. Reading the court opinion there makes me ill- clearly a judge who basically also thinks content is free and that fair use has a place in a digital world. There should be zero grey area and interpretation in my opinion- fair use needs to die. Mass media is not informing any longer, they are spinning and profiting from any other media they can steal and regurgitate. Educators, research, critics, etc. almost all are profiting or reducing their expense by using your work. Content other than verbal and some written quotes should never have been lumped in the same set of lax protective laws.

I've had people claim they are allowed to download and print any of my photos I post to the web. I've also had several re-posts, edits, and crops done to my images without permission and getting those taken down was extremely tough and in some cases impossible. People are greedy, selfish, and lazy, and will get away with what they can; in light of that I cannot begin to imagine why we have such lax laws or interpretations of the laws to protect individuals who spend their time, passion, and money creating content. The purpose and market value assessments in copyright lawsuits like this one are particularly vexing as they are completely subjective and put burden of proof on the creator. The entire system we have makes content creators bear great expense in time and money to protect what is clearly ours to distribute as we see fit. What should happen is the thieves of original work should have to bear great expense to defend their 'fair use'. Fair use needs to be dialed WAY down or completely eliminated in law that reflects modern life, not life decades ago.

I should add that 100% of work I wish to protect is now watermarked with © and my initials in a place that cannot be easily cropped, and I never upload images longer than 2000 pixels (usually 25% of originals). So frustrating we have to do all this.

 

[tmesias]

Such a vicious buisness.... being a profitable content creator seems harder than actually getting the tornado to begin with

 

[Warren Faidley]

The judge's attitude is really a reflection of today's entitlement society. People no longer consider (or value) the costs and time a person puts into creating something or providing a service. For some reason, people think we live in an all-inclusive world. You would not believe the number of requests I get for footage and images and the user does not want to pay a dime, or they want to pay an insulting fee. On Friday, National Geographic emailed me and offered $100.00 for me to research, edit and allow them to use a clip. Dream on. Now you know why I'm destroying all my originals before I kick the bucket.

 

[Dan Robinson]

As expected, this ruling has been overturned by a higher court.

Great news! 4th Circuit overturns bad fair use decision in Brammer v. Violent Hues - Photo Attorney®

In what confused many, the Eastern District of Virginia (“E.D. Va.) court previously ruled that Violent Hues’ use of Brammer’s photograph on VH’s website was fair use. But the confusion ends now: on appeal, the 4th Circuit reversed the E.D. Va. court and has ruled that VH’s use was not fair use...

www.photoattorney.com

 

[Warren Faidley]

Thanks for posting. Like I always say, MAKE SURE TO COPYRIGHT PHOTOS / VIDEO and bill the hell out of offenders.