The Ghost of Snapped Shot

Or, welcome to my low-maintenance heck.

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"Allegedly" Press

When does the news-agency-I-still-refuse-to-name see fit to preempt accusations with the dreaded "allegedly?"

It makes a quick appearance when any given perp is (allegedly) accused of being a terrorist. Or when (allegedly) a dictator aligned with a terrorist (allegedly) group. Or for anything released by the official government of Israel.

But when do they not see fit to use the label?

Apparently, when the target is yours truly!

Via Confederate Yankee, we receive Paul Colford's take on the matter as the AP's Director of Media Relations:

AP licenses its works (photos, news stories, video and so on) to newspapers, Web sites and broadcasters for the purpose of showing news events and to illustrate news stories or commentary on the news events.

If the entirety of the work is used (such as when a whole photo is reproduced), that is considered a substantial "taking" under fair use law. If there are many photos used, that is a substantial taking of AP's photo library.

In the case of criticism, the commentary or criticism has to be about the protected work, not commentary or criticism in general – not using, as in the case of Snappedshot.com, protected photos to illustrate something on which the blogger was commenting. One cannot post a copyrighted photo of President Bush to illustrate commentary criticizing the policies of his administration, for example.

Fair use does not give others the right to use AP content without paying for it, especially when the costs -- and risks -- of gathering news around the world continue to rise. As a result, the AP has been increasingly vigilant in protecting its intellectual property.


Of course, I'm not one to argue Paul's point—and I do hope that he appreciates that I'm doing everything I can to remedy the situation—but I do find the mysteriously missing "allegedly" to be quite amusing nonetheless. And I will say that his synopsis of this site seems to be missing some of the actual photo-criticism that was going on here.

But hey, caveat bully.

My congratulations on your PR victory, Paul.

I'll still be watching your agency's output like a hawk. Or maybe more like a dopey pigeon.

More commentary over at LGF. Even more over at The Elder's pad.

  #DailyFodder


Comments:

#1 captainfish 10-Mar-2008
So Brian, does that mean that you can take ... 30%, 40%, 60%, 75% of a photo and place it anywhere for any purpose and be free of copyright?

What is the delineation? What percentage of the photo's usage constitutes copyright infringement?

If you were to use it all but then place the words AP over certain parts of it, thus constituting a change, would that be free of copyright?

So, I still do not understand. If you take one photo out of the series of photos of Sir Knighted Bush at a press conference, isn't that NOT taking the works in its entirety? How can linking one photo out of a set of photos be infringing? yeah, still burning a bit.
#2 captainfish 11-Mar-2008
By the way Brian, I noticed that your site is copyrighted. How much do you charge for your copyright permit? I have been posting your links on my blog and sending your copyrighted materials (links) to my friends without your permission. And since I am using your links, I am using all of that particular content. I have also utilized many of your posts as emails to my friends thus your work now resides on email servers all over this country.

If I were to use only 10% of your blog link, would that put me in to fair use territory?
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