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Copyright, Social Media & Orphan Works – Advice for Protecting Your Photos

Liz — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:38:56 +0000

Many photographers have become fearful of the internet, in recent years. It is a double edged sword, a great tool for getting our work seen by a wider audience, but it’s also hard to track images, copyright infringements and keep up to date on where and how to safely display our portfolio.

I was rarely lucky to be trained in photographic law, the importance of retaining copyright and it’s worth. However, with an increasing number of people entering photography from a range of backgrounds, it is becoming vital for us all to keep up to date on the legalities of copyright and how the internet affects your rights as a photographer.

The easy part first: if you take a photograph, whatever it is of, (unless you agree e.g. through a staff job or by written contract) you own the copyright. You do not need to register your photographs in order to activate it. However, if you are uploading images to online sites or submitting to any news outlets, competitions … etc. you must, must read the terms and conditions as many will remove all of your rights.

There is infinite depth to this topic, so today I am going to try to simply highlight a few key issues that are likely to affect the majority.

A screen shot of one of Ahimsa Media client Yorkton Film Festival's watermarked albums on Facebook

The most prevalent image outlets in my mind are the ever growing social media sites. They are wonderful tools for connecting with friends and networking, but are not designed to protect the photographer, quite the opposite. Take for example Facebook, they have been recently hitting the headlines due to the site’s privacy laws. From a photographic point of view, their terms have another massive problem. Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook you agree that :

“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”

What this means is that as long as your photos are on Facebook, they can be used by Facebook without paying you. They don’t prevent you selling elsewhere, but can use your pictures for free. For this reason I ensure any content I place on facebook is watermarked. Of course, the vast majority of snaps we put on Facebook are not commercially viable, so you have to decide what you don’t mind being used by others.

Facebook terms, however, are not the only thing we should be fearful of. An even more worrying feature for the future is the stripping of photograph metadata, and as a result the loss of all copyright contact information.

Metadata is a photograph’s embedded information. It is contained within the photograph and is there to inform the viewer / potential buyer how the photo was shot, by whom and what it is of. Some of this data is automatically recorded by the camera (it does depend on which camera you have, how much, if any, is recorded). For example, the camera settings, f-stop, shutter speed, ISO. Other information is inputed by the photographer using editing software, like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. We use this to record our copyright information, website, keywords, captions. … etc … etc. It ensures that anyone who may wish to use your image knows who to contact for permission.

A screen shot of an image in Adobe Photoshop with the metadata box (file info) open to edit.

In the past (and even at current), metadata has been enough to cover us legally should anyone try to use a photo without permission, as you have included your contact information and if they do not follow up it is a copyright breach on their part. However there are new laws in the works in both the US and UK relating to Orphan Works.

Without getting too technical, in the last 12 months, both countries have come close to passing bills, which if passed, would have legislated the commercial use of any photograph whose author cannot be identified through a suitably negligent search (an orphans work). That would mean anyone could use any of your photographs that are not watermarked or do not contain metadata. Currently strong industry opposition has prevented this legislation, but many think it is only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.

In layman’s terms and in the words of Copyright Action, this is what this bill would mean:

Essentially, if photos were cars, so long as the numberplate is missing (or you can get rid of it and claim it was missing), you’ll be able to legally TWOC and use it on payment of a fee to the Government.

And facebook is not the only one to strip your metadata. Most social media sites and blog providers strip that data too. Why? Because doing so saves a little bit of space per image, and with millions of uploads, site providers think this is worthwhile. They realize few people are aware of the affect that this could have, and I must admit before writing this post, even I was unaware of the extent of sites stripping data.

US photographer, David Riecks, has been doing some research into metadata stripping and his early results shocked me. He has created Controlled Vocabulary to document tests on different sites and see how they change photo uploads. As expected, Facebook, Twitter and Google Docs removed all metadata. Flickr retained the content (despite my hearing comments to the contrary). Currently getting mixed information with blog, like WordPress and Blogspot, so testing that further. Will get back to you with my findings.

If you are worried about your rights and the law regarding your images, there are a few ports of call I try to keep an eye on: firstly Carolyn E. Wright’s photo attorney website, as she is uniquely useful being a full time photographer attorney, who is also a professional photographer. Out of Britain I have found EPUK invaluable. They deal primarily with the editorial market, but their sister site Copyright Action contains a great deal of useful basic information for both photographers and image buyers. And finally Pro-imaging is great for a variety of information.

Delta School District = a Social Media History Maker

Erica — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:37:14 +0000

Cross-post from DSD Youth Activities

Pretty impressed with the forward thinking of the Delta School District, as as far I am aware they will be one of the first school districts in Canada to fully embrace social media this summer, by actually offering students a course in it.

That’s right, the Delta School District is having me teach two mini-courses this summer on ‘Blogging and Storytelling’ and I’m pretty gosh, darn excited about it. I love Interactive Storytelling (which is a part of what using social media tools to tell story is), I love to share knowledge (especially that which excites me) and I love working with young people and seeing them get excited about learning.

So details on the classes? Here they are:

BLOGGING – STORYTELLING RESPONSIBLY & SAFELY (ages 10 – 15)

If our youth are going to blog, tweet or fire up flickr photos – on the new information highways – then might it be wise to teach them to do it in both a socially responsible and personally safe fashion? Join media arts specialist and Delta teacher Erica Hargreave as she helps students create their stories and characters online in a safe and responsible manner. This week of storytelling explores the use of social media tools which are becoming more and more a part of their lives. And of course … don’t forget your digital camera!

Fee: $70

ID 8153 July 6 -10 9:00 – 11:00 am Seaquam Secondary

ID 8154 July 13 – 17 1:00 – 3:00 pm Delta Secondary

Nervous about your child learning how to use social media? Well, I hate to say it, but it is just like sex. You can hide it from them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to experiment on their own. By showing young people the cool things they can do with social media and storytelling, we can encourage them to be safe, show them how to be safe and how to use the tools responsibly. I also might add, that it is the knowledge of how to use these tools safely and responsibly that a lot of businesses are looking to young people for guidance, opening those that know how to do this to a lot of opportunity.

Hope to see you and your young storytellers this summer!

Making Twitter History in Yorkton, Saskatchewan

Erica — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:38:23 +0000

A very cool thing happened to us at this years Yorkton Film Festival. We hit the ‘top ten trending twitter topics’!

Festival Social Media Team: Lee, Karen & Tris tweeting away

Now I know what some of you are thinking, so what, we do that all the time at various events here in Vancouver. Well, what made this hit on the ‘top ten trending twitter topics’ so exciting for both Tris Hussey and myself is that it was the twitter community following along on the Interactive Storytelling Panel conversation from outside of the room that drove us up to the ‘top ten trending twitter topics’. To the best of Tris’ and my knowledge this had only ever been done with conferences and events from inside the room. Definitely a twitter first for both Tris and I.

yff09 delegate, Joanne MacDonald, tweeting for the first time.

To make this even more exciting, this happened whilst one of the main points that we were getting across is that social media is about community and building the community around you. The twitter community demoed this for the festival delegates in real time, as they illustrated to the room how a conversation could go beyond four-walls and those that could not be present could still be a part of the conversation. The highlight of this for me was not during the panel, but at the awards gala, when @heckofamom could not be present at festival to see her sister, Teresa MacInnes win two Golden Sheaf Awards for ‘Norm’, but she could follow along in real time on twitter and be a part of the night with her parents, brother-in-law and Teresa. My eyes welled up with tears and I got all choked up when they thanked Tris and I at the end of the evening.

Teresa & her husband, Kent winning the Golden Sheaf for Best of Festival for 'Norm'

Community is also the factor that makes the Yorkton Film Festival so special to me. This Film Festival is a whole community event that the families of Yorkton, Saskatchewan put on for the film community. The community made us dinner every night for heavens sake. It was pretty gosh, darn special and I feel incredibly fortunate for having been a part of it.

Members of the Yorkton Red Hat Society at Opening Night

An enormous thank you to the twitter community, Yorkton community and yff09 delegates for making this years Yorkton Film Festival so very special to us!

Raising a glass to the following tweeters:

From Outside the Room:

From Inside the Room:

The Yorkton Film Festival Goes Interactive

Erica — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:27:56 +0000

Most excited to be heading off to the Yorkton Film Festival this week with Tris Hussey (from m2o) and Emme Rogers.

The three of us, along with locals, Richard Gustin, Karen Brownlee, and Lee Robertson will be demoing Interactive Storytelling to the Festival by telling the Festivals story through tweets, snapping pics, blogging and possibly even shooting a bit of video. Much of this is very new to both the film world and Saskatchewan, so we will be posting some basic how-to set-up various social media platform posts on Bridging Media. We will also be talking a fair bit about characters on the web there. We even did a podcast with @SookieBonTemps (the True Blood character Sookie Stackhouse on Twitter) that you should be able to find there later this week. For the lighter side of the Festival (or as Emme likes to call them festivities) check out Emme’s posts on Being Emme.

The main highlight of the festival for us is the Interactive Storytelling Panel on Friday May 22 from 1:30 – 4 pm Saskatchewan time, 12:30 – 3 pm PST. Very excited about this panel as it is all about what I am passionate about – Interactive Storytelling. We will be talking about building stories and characters interactively with the audience, using social media tools to effectively tell stories and further your projects, and discuss the future of media. Joining me on the panel is Richard Gustin (former head storyteller at SCN), Gresham Bradley (Director of On-line Development at e-cast in New Zealand), and Peter Raymont (Executive Producer of the Border). Emme is also insisting that she’s going to be making an appearance (apparently the lack of an invitation hasn’t dissuaded her) and Tris will be our in the audience online panelist driving the traffic and conversation online along with Lee Robertson and Karen Brownlee. We are really hoping some of our social media savvy friends from Vancouver and elsewhere will jump into the online conversation during the panel – the tag is #yff09 – as we want to highlight the sort of talent out there that the producers and broadcasters in the room should be bringing on to their projects. I know for sure that both @SookieBonTemps and @LordLikely are planning on hopping into the conversation.

Stay Tuned for more from Yorkton (mainly on Bridging Media, m2o, A View from the Isle and Being Emme)!