Be careful what you post on websites that sell advertising
by Matthew B. Harrison, Esq.
NEW YORK –– Most of us have seen the recent YouTube clip of a woman falling into a fountain at a mall while texting (now dubbed “the fountain lady”). This bit of slapstick reality has attracted millions of views, many duplicates, and even commentaries, remixes and faux interviews. It’s another viral video success and those who boarded that train early are even making money from the ad revenues. But is it legal?
The background involves some mall security employees posting video footage of a fellow female employee falling into a fountain online, while sharing their own “director” commentary while they playback and repeat the video from their security office. With more than three million views in less than two weeks, it spawned many other YouTube videos with their own commentary and creativity. Radio has certainly picked up the story and generated its own share of commentary both on the air and on the web. The identity of the woman was –– at this point –– unknown to the public.
However, this changed when the employee “outed” herself as the person featured in the video. She is threatening lawsuit that someone in security should have come to her rescue instead of laughing at her misfortune. One lesson is quite clear –– it’s easy to be so consumed in our digital devices that we fail to pay attention to our physical surroundings.
NEW YORK — As media technology advances, our legal system tends to lag behind. Old rules governing new situations as interpreted by judges who aren’t exactly on the leading edge of these advances, is often a recipe for disaster. To apply existing rules to the internet requires a liberal (as in “not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas”) interpretation. This same interpretation as it could then be applied to terrestrial radio could prove problematic.
In New York, defamation suits revolve around what the average person reading or hearing a communication would take an alleged “false statement of fact” to mean.
The average person, at the time this law was drafted, was probably a very active terrestrial media consumer. However, now with the courts being inundated with internet based communications matters, the average person who is consuming internet media is becoming the standard in which all rules apply.
By Matthew B. Harrison, esq.
PhotosAndTheLaw.com
Last month, this column detailed the four factors of the fair use defense to copyright infringement. The prior column addressed how to use the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in order to protect your audio (and video) from misuse. Both of these articles generated enough reader feedback and follow up questions, that it seemed like a good idea to provide a summary article with some additional clarifications.
The first two, and the most straightforward, of four factors of a fair use defense to copyright infringement are:
· The nature of the copyrighted work; and
· The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
and the two that led to the most follow up are:
· The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; and
· The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
THE INTERNET AS A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD
Protect yourself while getting the most out of the promotional opportunities
By Matthew B. Harrison, esq.
PhotosAndTheLaw.com
How many of you have your own website that showcases your photography? How many of you use other websites – such as myspace, deviantart, webshots, flickr, etc – to display your work? The Internet can be an amazingly inexpensive way for you, as a photographer, to 1) be able to showcase your work and 2) hopefully bring in potential business through these self-promotional efforts. However, before you run out and get yourself a website to showcase your images, I would like you to think about protecting yourself and your property, so that you do not end up falling into the group that answers affirmatively to the next question.
Of those who do display their work online – how many of you have had the pleasant experience of surfing the web and seeing your image somewhere without your permission? Unfortunately, it happens more than any of us would like to admit and you need to be aware of this phenomenon so that you can adequately protect yourself.
