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Photographer Threatened With Legal Action After Asserting His Copyright
New submitter JamieKitson writes "Photographer Jay Lee got more than he bargained for after sending some DMCA takedown notifications out to hosts of sites using one of his pictures. One Candice Shwagger accused him of everything from conspiracy over local sheriff elections to child abuse. Since Candice is now threatening legal action, Jay has said he'll take down the post, so here's a snap shot. After reading the story, I checked for use of my own pictures and found one of them being used on a review site without even a credit."
How do I find out who uses my pictures on the internet?
-- Cheers!
Whats / wheres the story?
When the first phrase of the offending article is "Let's talk about plagiarism..."
It is hilarious that the linked article on the restaurant review site opens with, "LET'S talk about plagiarism, innovation or the often very small adaptations of an idea that pass as evolution in the restaurant business," and then proceeds to violate copyright with its banner photograph!
"Go ahead and sue me." The infringing person would likely never follow through, or if he did, lose the case and a lot of money. ----- Just like that Oregon Newspaper editor who tried to steal an article from an online reporter. He too threatened to sue but backed down (and paid $500 to the reporter), because he knew he was guilty-guilty-guilty. Downloading something for personal enjoyment is one thing; earning wealth off the back of a worker's labor w/o paying them is entirely different (and evil).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Aaaaaannnndddd..../.ed
Any other link?
at the bottom of the article, in bold black letters, they give you credit now.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
I found TFA very interesting. Sounds like the lady is off her rocker. However - the bottom line is that if you don't want someone to "take" your stuff, don't post it on-line. Sort of like, "don't leave your wallet on your dashboard with the windows down". Should you be able to? Sure. Will you be able to, without someone taking it? No. Should you be surprised when you come back and your wallet is gone? No. Should you be surprised when you post stuff on-line and someone uses it for their own purposes? No. Should you be able to address the issue? Sure. Can you save yourself a lot of headache by not posting your stuff on-line in the first place? You betcha.
Practical advice for the guy in TFA? If you're going to post your photos on-line, put a great big watermark on it that says something to the effect of, "If you want to use this photo, YOU NEED TO PAY ME! Email whatever@ whatever.com for details!"
How is this news??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Jay Lee also hosts a technology radio show out of Houston called Technology Bytes.
If your business model is based on artificial scarcity in the world of nearly free copying of information, you need a new business model. You are making the same mistake as the RIAA.
Being a semi-pro photographer myself (and facing the same problem), I find the woman in the original article ludicrous.
There's a lot of problems with trying to share your photos with the world (under copyright) and people using them w/o permission. I know my own photos are being used (and quite often abused) all over the place.
The photos aren't very pleasing to look at if they have watermarks all over them obscuring detail:(
Not that I don't freely allow many non-profits (including zoos) to use my photos all over the world and that I have certainly been paid for legal use of some few.
I read his post and it seemed well-thought out... I've had people rip off my entire website, once upon a time. They changed the background image and lo and behold, it was "his site."
So what I don't get is in the post previous to that one, linked at the top of the page, is him taking pictures where he himself says it's forbidden/not allowed?
(I'd disagree with the signs, too, but still...)
I had a sucky sig.
Elrond: We cannot use the DCMA. That we now know too well. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
I love how the article that use's Jamie's unattributed pictures starts:
LET'S talk about plagiarism...
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
Let us all bow our heads and say a few prayers over the scorch mark on the rack that used to be the baldheretic.com webserver, hoster of the linked original article.
is she going to remove her inflamatory remarks in this post?
http://atty4kids.org/garciajayleecheapshotatty/
Wow. That is what is like when you cross paths with someone that is truly unhinged. If I were Jay, I'd be checking to see if there are any bunnies in boiling pots on my stove.
Point out a completely absurd situation, then link a single photo of a burger you took a picture of, that you found on a review site. You now have credit on the website. you might want to update your OP
Because not everything in this world needs a lawyer.
I've challenged the use of my pictures with the DMCA even though I live in a country that does not have it.
I've even had one person threaten to 'sue my ass off and if that don't work, I'll pepper your ass with buckshot'.
I simply sent the DMCA Takedown to his hosting company.
I have the full documentary evidence to prove that I was in the place where the picture was taken at the time it was taken. So even if he sued me he wouldn't win a bent penny. How do I know that the picture is mine? Well less than 100 people a year visit this place and everyone of them has their names recorded. His name? Not on the list.
Look up South Georgia on the map. A Slam dunk case for me.
on one of her many sites She sound like a b****.
I feel I have to address this one: Jay Lee /was/ being a good guy about it. He did the legally correct move (file a DMCA) and worked with those that responded to find mutually agreeable terms. In this specific case someone responded that she felt harmed and he quickly told GoDaddy to reinstate her sites while he worked it out with her.
So you're mad at him for doing things as the law suggests and then going beyond the law to provide that which he wasn't required to? I mean, he /could/ have started by individually contacting the admin of each site but why should he be required to spend even /more/ resources to help those who had /broken/ the law from suffering for it?
Candice Shwagger now that her antics have made the front page of /.
Its well knows that the weenies on /. have issues with cyberbullies, and a very long memory.
Its a good thing that nobody here would print that page to PDF and keep it archived and continue to remind the world of her shennigannis for a very long time.
I think Houston's best marketing attorny is going to be having problems since future clients will call her site into question because she's pladgerizing other peoples work. The Texas Bar association should really know about this, perhaps they will take action and actually end her career.
While photos are fairly easy to duplicate, registering them with the copyright office shortly after taking them is a pretty powerful argument when people use them outside of the attributions you license them with. If a site is infringing on their work, tell them to ask their lawyer about going to court over a registered copyright and they'll settle real quick. It's the difference between $500 and $50,000 if it ever goes to court. This does several things. 1) it demonstrates that you took the photo. 2) That you are asserting copyright (and quickly at that) 3) opens up the infringers to further damage apart from time and materials. There's a recent book on photography and copyright that's a good reference.
..is a crazy system that allows a site to be taken down with no prior warning, negotiation or appeal beforehand, surely.
Smivs on the intertubes!
"Now she’s trying my patience. She’s going back and forth offering the pay me and threatening to sue me and beating the “save the babies” drum very hardand upside me head."
/. mis-spelled the name. Doesn't look like she's missing too many meals
This is the type of gold one used to find on cruel.com from time to time.
http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/candice-schwager?slide=37962031
You have 48 hours to remove your nauseating bullshit or you will be sued for libel, defamation, slander, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress.
libel and slander from an internet post. wonder how that shit works.
Candice Schwager's blog post is still up at http://chicksandpolitics.com/ and it is hilarious.
Oh, god, she has YouTube channel, and has a ladyboner for Newt Gingrich: http://www.youtube.com/user/candilaw99
It is my professional opinion as a programmer that this woman is mentally ill and should be disbarred.
"good guy" and "file a DMCA" don't quite fit in the same paragraph, unless it also includes some form of negation. Seriously. Would you use RICO against an individual who wronged you? Would you send them to Guantanamo? Certain things just aren't done by "good people" even if they happen to be temporarily legal.
Then maybe she should have been more careful about where she got her photos from. Although it seems to me like she is someone who is VERY accustomed to having her own way all the time.
Why in the world would he capitulate to her insane demands? She violated his copyright, and has not successfully intimidated him into leaving her alone AND taking down his blog post about the incident? Nail her to the courtroom wall.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
I would have thought pictures of little "MR" girls in safety helmets would be more effective than ones of sky-scrapers.
Amusing comments in the "recent posts by others" section, though...
"After reading the story, I checked for use of my own pictures and found one of them being used on a review site without even a credit."
From the link...
"THE FOOD PICTURES ON THIS PAGE COME FROM JAMES KITSON AND CAN BE VIEWED HERE. THANKS FOR THE USE OF THEM."
Watch out there, if Candace finds out this is here she may decide to sue the whole lot of us for “libel, defamation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and seek punitive damages as well as actual, court costs, attorney fees, and interest”. Translated from lawyer-speak into English -- ;-(
To avoid copyright issues of my own.... Read more: http://www.baldheretic.com/2012/05/23/protecting-my-copyright#ixzz1vuKTe5iY
sudo make me a sandwich
She sounds bat shit crazy.
.(drumroll, guess!)Houston Chronicle. A guy like Jay Lee would know how to inflict the most harm with a single shot. So, he did. Read his column and ask yourself: was this guy really clueless as to how host sites carry others and how to I.D. The host, disabling all. Motive? Muddy the Water of an overblown 4 year old set up. Though 4 Judges and the AG found that Garcia improperly withheld exculpatory evidence to terminate Guthrie without cause, Camp Garcia is desperate to poke holes and twist clear facts: Guthie beat him badly 3x. My blogs are the only high. ranked discussions of the Attorney General, 14th Court of Appeals, and Judge Caroline Baker’s rulings. Dillon butchered them, but lacks credibility due to Pittman agenda.
http://chicksandpolitics.com/
There are pages of this rambling nonsense:
I’m still shell shocked, because it’s pretty clear that Jay Lee was hand picked for crafty weasliness with advanced studies in computer hacking. He also happens to be an amateur photographer at
Her Blogspot site ...
http://attorney4specialneeds.blogspot.com/
Has the same logo as ...
http://activesportfitness.co.uk/
Someone seems to have copied it from the other.
Thanks to Google Goggles for that quick research!
I think it's reasonable for the photographer to request the picture be removed by the site operator before filing a DMCA notice. I can understand, however, why he wouldn't considering his photo is being used all over the place and he can't contact everybody individually. If he had done so though, I bet she would have just replaced the image (I hope).
If you receive a bogus DMCA takedown notice you have the right to name and shame the culprit. If you, however, receive a legitimate takedown notice then you are violating someone else's copyright and maybe you should have checked out the provenance on the image on your front page before deciding to just go ahead and use it. This woman's behavior is childish and shameful. She constructed this machiavellian conspiracy theory just so she doesn't have to feel stupid for using someone else's photo without credit or permission and then bullied the photographer into submission by hurling unsubstantiated slurs against his character.
If anyone in this mess is guilty of libel, it's Schwagger.
The DMCA takedown notice procedure is almost certainly part of the problem. As copyright enforcement tools go, it's a hammer and not a scalpel. Lee could have approached her differently for sure, but her reaction is so over the top and ridiculously childish that it staggers the imagination.
And you're not man enough to put your name to your comment? Get over yourself....
Give me free pictures or I'll sue you. Is that the rationale?
Look, lady, take your own damn picture of Houston or find one under free license. Is that so difficult for an attorney to figure out?
On the other hand, using the DMCA from the start is a bit harsh because of the side-effects (e.g., whole sites being disabled, depending on how the ISP handles it). It would have been simpler to send a regular note to whoever the website contact is, ask them nicely not to use the (copyrighted) image without permission, and if they didn't respond in a week or two, then say "Fine. I'll use the DMCA process and see what your ISP thinks of the issue."
Do we care? Both of them are crazy. Take your nutjob rants and DMCA takedowns and stuff 'em where the sun don't shine.
The DMCA, when properly used, is a pretty good process:
1. File DMCA to hosting provider
2. Hosting provider removes access to offensive file and informs uploader
3. Uploader can respond
4. Purported owner and uploader resolve situation if necessary
The key here is that you have to be sure you have the right file before starting at step 1, which Jay Lee did. This all went tits-up when GoDaddy decided to shut down all of the related sites instead of just that one resource, but that's not the DMCA or Jay Lee's fault.
Now the big problem with the DMCA is that it's very easy to abuse. But that's not what Mr. Lee was doing with it since he only targeted exactly what belonged to him.
As for RICO, if an individual qualified as a "criminal organization" then hell yes I'd want RICO used against him.
"good guy" and "file a DMCA" don't quite fit in the same paragraph, unless it also includes some form of negation. Seriously. Would you use RICO against an individual who wronged you? Would you send them to Guantanamo? Certain things just aren't done by "good people" even if they happen to be temporarily legal.
You're comparing filing a DMCA request to protect ownership of your creative works to charging someone with racketeering or sending them to an out-of-country prison known to use inhuman tactics? Seriously? And that's being modded "Interesting"?
Wow.
He put a picture on the internet to share it with others who might want to *SEE* it. He did want to share his picture, he simply didn't want someone else claiming it as their own without compensation. Seems fair enough to me.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I bet if the photographer walked into any lawyer's office and stated the case the lawyer would be happy to counter sue. Bowing to threats just lets the bullies get away with intimidation. There are laws against threats and baseless lawsuits. She would have to pay legal fees if something like this ever went to court. Hiding behind non-profit status does not make bullying OK.
Another avenue is that since she is a lawyer you could forward the communications to the State Bar association as baseless threats of lawsuits is an ethical issue. The Bar may not do anything but they may. If one does not try then it defiantly will never work. As Gretzky said "Every shot not taken will miss."
I can't wait until she finds out it is on /. and comes over here with her rant and threats. That should make for some really good reading!
This is what you get when you have laws in place like the DMCA. Some thug (not that I'm calling Lee a thug) can come along and threaten all sorts of outlandish damages. GoDaddy, in order to cover its *ss, just pulls the plug, rather than waiting to see if the notice was posted in error or other accommodations could have been made. Who knows? Perhaps all Lee needed was a few bucks and provide proper attribution for the photo. And its not just an issue of mitigating the real damages (which would involve taking down only the offending site). GoDaddy is running so scared, they pull the plug on everything.
Have gnu, will travel.
At your leisure, go find a post about big business with a takedown notice. You'll see comment after comment basically stating "fuck big business and da police!" Then ask yourself if you feel any different reading this article and, if you do, go fuck yourself. I know Schwager is embarrassingly manic, but look past that. See how easy it was for Jo Schmo to get a takedown granted without going through the courts? He shared it on the internet and, assuming she had even considered its copyright, Schwager had no idea who it belonged to or the license behind it.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Anyone know what the photographer offered to license his picture for ? $100, $1000? Seems to be the missing detail of the interesting back and forth... Weird.
okay the way the law works is if you want to use a photo/image NOT LABELED AS FREE USE /PUBLIC DOMAIN and you are profiting from it (commercial use) you ring up the photographer/creator and work out a deal
or
You get your own camera and take your own picture.
im sure that a lawyer worth her diploma could work out some sort of deal for a single picture (maybe a couple hundred bucks and or a nice credit line).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
The Answer is a Lot of light watermarks across the image.
Sorry but it's a fact of the internet. If you dont want your image lifted, only power Low res (1024X768 or less) and watermarked.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Going straight to the lawyers is now the 'good guy' move?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You'd be astonished how many attorneys are (or present as) bi-polar. This lady sounds like one.
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Some people have the warped idea that once one has put something on the internet that it's automatically "with-out" cost and for "free use", unless clearly stated otherwise. The notion "well, they should have put a watermark on it" excuses the theft in some peoples(thieves) minds.
This view even exists in people who consider themselves as "law-abiding".
I run a site about a medical condition mainly affecting children, I do this with absolutely no financial incentive.... so I'm in the situation to say that just having a site "dedicated to promoting and supporting special needs children" IS NO F*CKING EXCUSE !!!! (pardon my blatant us of caps)
I wonder if this bat shit crazy woman has ever heard of it. Shall we teach her all about it? I'm not a lawyer, but I play one when drunk. It seems to me that her mind numbing dribble ramblings about Jay are the epitome of libel.
Apparently she has never heard of the Streisand effect. Most of her sites are offline and her facebook pages are getting hammered... Sweet internet justice :).
I suggest that he contact a couple of the better legal blogs (like Popehat). The lawyer-bloggers tend to take a dim view of lawyers who make ludicrous legal threats. He might well get a bit of much-needed support and useful advice.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Seems the problem is GoDaddy, not the law.
If you RTFA, you would see that most notified the owners of the websites and the content was taken down. GoDaddy seems to have just removed the entire account because of one DMCA.
Let me first say that the lady is crazy and did not go about things like a sane person would. Let me also say that I am not a fan of the DMCA, but from a legal standpoint I think this guy should stick to his guns if he truly cares about his claims. That being said...
Looking at the actual photograph in question, anyone with a nice camera and a basic understanding of Photoshop (or even Instagram) could reproduce this, or something damn well close (especially considering the images are only being used at web resolution). If the accused parties weren't lazy themselves, they would just go out and take essentially the exact same picture and then avoid this whole scenario. Now, combine the fact that this photo is unoriginal/easily reproducable, with the fact that this guy is giving up his DMCA claim now that someone is pushing back on him, makes it look to me like he actually is trying to "extort" money from her in a way.
Scenario: Guy puts camera on tripod and takes photo of downtown. Runs it through an HDR filter in Photoshop. Total time spent: 20 minutes. Guy then spends hours, days perhaps, searching online for people that are using his photo and sending them very impersonal legal threats, asking for money, and going as far as to have their websites removed from the internet. That seems really harsh to me, considering the photo in question.
He may think he is protecting his intellectual property, but to me, I just see some dude taking "Introduction to Photography"-level photos and then trying to sell them for a bunch of money. Steve Mccurry is a real photographer, we should reserve DMCA notices for original creative content like his, not some snapshot of a downtown skyline that probably thousands of tourists have strikingly similar pics of from their vacation.
My advice to this guy would be to get a real job and contribute something more to society than taking pictures of buildings and then demanding people pay you because you foolishly posted it online without a watermark. But I guess when you are already a starving artist, its easier to try and extort money from people for your poor excuse for art than it is to get a real job that actually contributes to society, or at least try to produce genuine, original art that is not so ordinary looking as to create the impression that no one would care if it were used like it has been.
I meant that telling GoDaddy to get her back up and running was the good guy move.
Filing a DMCA isn't "the legally correct move" - it's merely one of several options which are legal. He could also have:
1) Politely requested a public credit for the photo;
2) Politely requested an acknowledgement by the web master;
3) Done nothing at all.
There's no good way of doing something bad. There's no "well I could have done something worse" to excuse bad behaviour.
There are countries out there without copyright laws, you could move to Somalia if you do not like them.
...who is next in line for the same treatment?
What her conduct says about her in this instance sheds light on everything else she does. If I were her employer, she'd be terminated.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Filing a DMCA request doesn't require a lawyer. Try again.
I'm a nature photographer.
It's one thing dispute who has the copyrights of a photograph, but responding with spurious claims of conspiracy and child abuse is plain evil.
Personally, I would have stood my ground and let the legal system work for me in this.
You were in the right, to protect what's yours, and she used character assassination, and intimidation to get you to do what was in HER best interests, and no one else's. There are laws regarding such things, and what she did appears to be against most of them (think MAFIA tactics).
Stay strong, stand your ground, and make her pay for the wrong she's done.
Amen brother! If I had mod points, you would totally own them.
At a friends graduation, the place was swarming with photographers taking pictures right and left and giving away their business cards. When we went to pick some photos up from a photographer's shop, we found out that his prices were ludicrous. Dude, that was MY freaking face on the picture! (not a pretty one, but still) So the guy was holding on to thousands of photos from the graduation party that were partially taken without the consent of the pictured individuals and their prices were absurd. And when we told him that we also want the digital files of our photos together with the printouts (for that price), he told us that that was not possible because the digital images were under his copyright. I say screw that guy, his business and his colleagues.
Yes, he took time to be at the graduation party, and yes, his pictures were better looking that the amateurish ones (back then). But you know what? Nobody asked him to be there. And with the quality of amateur cameras and phones getting more and more awesome, his sort will become extinct and I won't be surprised (or sad).
Reading just bits and pieces of this lady's blog it is quite apparent that she is full-on batshit, tea-party, paranoid-about-liberal-media crazy. Ignoring the fact that most of her wrath should be directed toward the insane policies of GoDaddy who are the ones who decided to shut down ALL her sites over a single photograph, she needs to have someone with backbone sue her dumb ass for slander and defamation so she can see how the law actually works. She needs a massive mental slap upside the head to rattle her brain back into place. She's pulling conspiracies out of thin air left and right, making all kinds of accusations without a shred of evidence. Oh, her evidence is, "I don't believe in coincidences."
I love the cognitive dissonance of these people. She quotes a supposed conservative psychologist expounding on some sort of horribly obvious but also incredibly nebulous psychological "problem" with Obama: "His externalizing all blame to conservatives, George W. Bush, or the “racist” bogeyman hints at persecutory delusions." Funny, I thought that's what conservatives were doing all day long, in the other direction. Externalizing all blame for literally EVERYTHING to liberals and Obama. Pot, kettle, carbon motherfuckin' black.
Wow. Just wow. Reading that blog is scary. She should apply for a job at Fox News. I'm sure she'd fit in perfectly. Now excuse me while I go scrub the crazy out of my brain with some Dragonball.
It took me a full five minutes before I realized the woman's name wasn't "Schwanger". I'm not saying what she did was right, but I understand....
From the review link in TFS:
Jeeze - the review/story talks about plagiarism immediately after the copied & unattributed photo: doesn't that almost count as fair-use? /joke. Note, emphasis in quote added by yours truly.
I thought it must have been modified since this kerfuffle came to light, but it appears to be original text...
What a load of histrionic bullshit. Gitmo? Are you fucking kidding me? You're really lacking an argument so much you have to pull that out? Call him a Nazi child molester and seal the deal while your at it. What, pray tell, is there to "negotiate" here? It's not like she and the others didn't know they were taking someone else's work, without permission or credit, and using it to make money for themselves. If someone steals your wallet, are you obligated to ask nicely for it back before you call the cops? Bullshit. People stole his stuff. There's a law that gives him redress. He used it. Correctly. Period. And you genuinely want to make out that he's the bad guy here? You believe this? And you paint him with the same brush as corrupt and illegal government actions. That is so deeply sad, and reflects so badly on your broken sense of ethics, I lack adequate words...
which is why all my uploaded photography has a copyright text....
...and stupid to assert your copyright, why should we care? Maybe you really don't hold the copyright to those images.
Or maybe you're just a giant pussy and everything wrong with the copyright debate.
Either way, you got beat by a bully. Now give me your fucking lunch money, bitch.
"Love it or leave it" right? Based on your posting history "tworiver" you seem not to take a liking to copyright when the MPAA/RIAA is doing the enforcing. That makes you a fucking hypocrite.
He mentions how she's throwing "Think of the children" down his throat but he seems to have seriously caved to it. Why is he cowering in fear at this woman's insane lawsuit threats?
I've got the feeling Jay Lee said or did something that he isn't mentioning in the article. It just doesn't make sense since he's the actual victim here, having his copywritten material used without permission, but he was gonna take the blog entry down that talks about this? What leg does this woman even have to stand on to sue him?
I don't know, I think if I were running some sort of mission critical website, I'd at least make sure the images I use had a proper license or were clearly public domain or whatever. I'd hate for my important website to be taken down over some preventable issue.
Even at that, if she has a non-profit fair use exemption, I don't think there's any law that says she CAN'T notify the copyright holder that she's exercising fair use rights.
And just to cap it off, if MY websites were so important, they sure as hell wouldn't be on low-buck GoDaddy shared hosting.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's on the internet, so it's freely usable right?
http://www.whenigrowupi.com/uploads/8/0/2/7/8027750/3500567.jpg?165
Yeah, that's a picture of Candice Schwagger. I'm sure she'll agree to your "free & non-profit" use of it in any way desired. Do I sense a new Meme Sensation?!?
First: since when does Slashdot give a fuck about people's copyrights?
Second: file a complaint against the bitch. It's against the rules in every state to threaten frivolous legal action. She doesn't have to be *your* lawyer for you to do this.
Wow so now we all are lawyers? I mean give me break, what has this world come to when copying a photo causes a deluge of DMCA takedowns. If you want to share, post it on the internet. Otherwise stay off of it and go to law school.
Given that the photo was posted on Flickr and clear marked as a copyrighted photo with "all rights reserved", any adult should know better than to think s/he can appropriate for their own commercial enterprise ... and in this specific case, it wasn't just any random person, but in fact a LAWYER that appropriated the work of another.
Before even considering the unprofessional behavior, this was worth a slap from the state bar association, now it's worthy of several slaps and a couple of kicks as well.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Yeah, everyone should share everything, since nobody is special, and live off their parents for eternity.
I guess if someone "lifted" some of Candice Schwager's site content for their own use she would have an issue though...
Just because you're too lazy (or ignorant) to assert your legal rights...none of us should have those rights?
1D10t
I think this is a text book example of copyright at work. DMCA and copyright works here as intended and DMCA is helping the little guy in his battle with the pirates, copycats, thieves, aggregators and other parasites.
Wow. It's hard to believe that such utterly ghastly people exist. Is this the new face of right-wing America?
Her blog is rife with personal attacks, wild fantasies, conspiratorial bullshit and all manner of general pure.. NASTINESS.
What a truly truly horrible woman.
Before she started going nuts on the guy, I'm guessing describing that her sites were intended to promote a charity and attributing the photo might have worked.
Now? If I were the photographer, her next communication to me in ANY form would be answered very simply: "Address any further communications to my lawyer, here's his or her address."
Wow so now we all are lawyers? I mean give me break, what has this world come to when copying a photo causes a deluge of DMCA takedowns. If you want to share, post it on the internet. Otherwise stay off of it and go to law school.
Does that include free software like Linux, Firefox, etc? So Microsoft should be able to download that software and do whatever they want with it? If you disagree with that statement, what's the difference between Linux, Firefox, and this guy's photograph? What makes the first two copyrightable and the last one not?
Yes that includes Linux, Firefox, et al. To me the GPL/BSD/etc licensing issue is ridiculous. If you don't want people sharing it, don't put it on the Internet. Go shrink wrap it and put in under lock and key.
Yeah, just like at the movies. If they didn't want people to record it onto their camcorders, they shouldn't put the movie on the big screen. ...oh wait, you did.
If record companies don't want people to copy CD's, they shouldn't print CD's.
Supermarkets put food in their stores, then they let people in for free and those people take the food. Big deal. Get over yourself.
If you want to say dumb shit without being held responsible, you should post as AC.
By your logic you can either make something public domain or keep it hidden from the outside world.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Her 12-year old child may have been diagnosed as mentally handicapped, but it still has a fair chance to surpass its mother.
I have worked for a non-profit before. And I've had to issue DMCA noticed before. Not in the same job, mind you.
Speaking from the DMCA side, I always contacted the offending author first. I know most people just make mistakes and don't intend on copying something out of spite. The less "legal" action I take, the better it is. So in that light, Jay could have just send her an e-mail. But the DMCA does give him the right to just start the legal process right away.
I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that Jay has had a large number of copyright violators. I know I have and find it harder and harder to write to each individual person and say that they are copying my work. It's much easier to just submit a form to X company and have them deal with it. And I'm guessing this is why Jay just submitted the form.
From the non-profit side of things, I had to make every penny count. I could NOT afford risk. I would think that this lawyer, assuming she was indeed an angel sent from heaven to do the Lord's work, would not want to risk thousands of dollars in fines simply because she was too lazy. The fact that she was a lawyer makes this even worse. If the site had been "Help little Timmy get the life-saving surgery he needs", I'm sure it would have been a bit different. But an attorney running a website advertising services should have known better. If she wasn't up-to-speed on DMCA, she should have consulted an IP attorney, or at the very least, a techie.
We don't live in Shouldland.
Fuck you... it's a picture of the Houston skyline, not some work of "art". Similarly, the other photo they are whining about is a picture of burgers from a restaurant.
A lot of lawyers use the law like a weapon -- a blunt club that they can use to intimidate and coerce, even when they're in the wrong. In case you are a lawyer and don't understand why people hate your job: this is exhibit A. (Obligatory IANAL.)
Treasure hunt! Try to find another photo she has that is infringing and get the owner of the copyright to submit another DMCA takedown!
It was his image, and his time to waste if he cared what was done with it. Other people spent their time taking his work and using it for their profit....
Watermarking is only good when you control the source. However, when a customer buys the non-watermarked image and uses it, it can then be lifted by anyone else.
Ok he went 'legal' on her first before talking to her. Happy?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Thought we hate DMCA notices, and really hated people that abused the system.
We do, as soon as he abuses the system you be sure to let us know.
Use is not abuse. It was a little strong, but it's not out of line. If he started mass sending DMCA notices without checking to see if it was his image, that is abuse. If he used DMCA notices to shut down a site for the sole purpose of shutting down a site, that is abuse. He filed a notice using the tools given to him, GoDaddy are the ones that overreact to DMCA notices.
Would you rather he went straight to a copyright infringement lawsuit? He could have done that. Then the first notice she would have gotten was, 'hi, I'm suing you for using my pictures commercially, see you in court'.
One can rail against the RIAA/MPAA and still feel for this photographer. He did not threaten to sue, he did not start a court case to uncover her IP address, he did not try to extort a multi-thousand dollar settlement out of her to avoid a court case that could bankrupt her, he did not bribe political figures to pass scary new laws giving him government like power to shut her down. He filed a takedown notice asking her not to use his copyrighted work.
One can both respect copyright while still deploring powerful groups that abuse those same rules to crush people who can't defend themselves.
Not really.
In short, you have (1) a woman who didn't play by the book and is an asshat, (2) a company that overreacted, and (3) a guy who did play by the book and who clearly had a legitimate beef.
You seem to be directing your outrage at #3.
Way to set priorities, dude. I'm outta here, have a nice day.
I'm a nature photographer.
Funny you should mention something like that. We paid a photographer a thousand dollars to take pictures at my sister's wedding and they were TERRIBLE, when we finally got them (my mother had to hound him). He wouldn't surrender the negatives either. My uncle, with his low end 35 mm camera took much better photos and those are the ones that ended up in our albums. Today, most anyone (even inexperienced) with a DSLR could do a much better job than the photographer that ripped us off.
I was under the impression that affixing that image to media grants a copyright to the photographer. Does it matter that it is "just" the skyline? Does it only qualify as art if "therealgrogan" says so?
I have a few images on my web site, and I'm aware of the "problem" of copyright infringement. However it also depends on how they are used. If someone uses a picture commercially I expect to get credit for it. But if it's just for pleasure - viewing the image or using it as a desktop background I don't worry about it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You mean if someone right clicked on her background and saved that little skyline of Houston? That would be a pretty small minded thing to object to.
I laugh at that photographer, spending all that time and energy to assert his authority because he posted his pictures online and people are using parts of them.
That the DMCA allows such takedowns without any consideration reflects badly on Americans.
Absolutely... she's a twat, but so is he for issuing a takedown notice for her site, over the use of part of his skyline photo.
I strongly recommend this photographer not back down. I (and I'm sure a lot of other people) would like to contribute to a legal fund to support him in his quest and to take down this arrogant woman using her barely adequate legal prowess to bully a photographer.
If you don't like waterboarding, you can move to Somalia as well.
Merika, fuck yeah!
^-- This.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
With that level of nuttery on her side, reacting like a sane person is not an expectation.
DMCA takedowns are quite simple. One party sends a notice stating "please take down my copyrighted material". The other side either complies or states "It's not copyrighted" and it goes back up. Now it is the first party's problem to prove that it is his/her copyrighted material.
Simply, all she had to say was "No, it's not copyrighted, Godaddy, bring my sites back up". Of course, she's an attorney, she can't do that. She would know that would be lying. Instead she throws a tantrum. Now, that's some professionalism Candice Schwager!
And she'a an attorney, how could she not know copyright infringement is illegal? What she did was as bad as when Micheal Moore put one of Micheal Yon's photos on his website without permission; At least Moore took the picture down without being a whiny suck about it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If someone wronged me and I had the power, I would totally send them to Guantanamo.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
>>>"good guy" and "file a DMCA" don't quite fit in the same paragraph, unless it also includes some form of negation
It does:.
The owner files the DMCA.
The target says, "I'm not infringing anything."
The DMCA notice is automatically negated and the target's website restored.
Ignorant boob.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The focus has been on the crazy woman, but GoDaddy has a big part of the blame here:
And, as it turned out, all of these sites are linked together as far as GoDaddy is concerned which resulted in all 14 of them going down after I filed my complaint.
A photographer filed a DMCA request asserting that a single image was infringing. GoDaddy took down 14 web sites in response. GoDaddy should be liable for damages for taking down 13 of those sites, and potentially for all 14. Now in this case, little harm was done. But imagine the real-world equivalent: A poster is on a wall and so the entire building is leveled. Does that make sense? If a single phone bill is late, does the entire neighborhood lose their phone service? If an electric bill is late does the entire city block lose power? GoDaddy's response makes no sense, and the DMCA should not protect them from such stupidity.
A surprising amount of time just asking before publishing and posting a photo credit is all it takes to get permission, especially if your an individual or a non-profit.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It also seems that he would have been perfectly happy to receive an email asking for permission to use the image on a nonprofit site. He likely would have just asked for a proper citation in the footer or some other credit for the photo. It's simple things like this that, done prior to simply taking someone's work, garner a lot of good will, but, done after you've been caught, buy you nothing.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If you chose to assert no rights over the picture, that is your choice. Jay Lee chose otherwise. I'm sure you wouldn't want him making the choice for you any more than he would want you making the choice for him.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
This reads a little like some of the old Leonard J. Crabs articles from Something Awful back in the day.
More Twoson than Cupertino
She's not even Houston's best marketing attorney. She's in marketing FOR attorneys. And it doesn't even look like real marketing, more internet "marketing" such as web design, SEO, social media, etc. You'd think that Houston's best attorney marketing would at least be on the first page of google results for "Houston attorney marketing".
After the blog post with her name, she could try to sue him, but she would lose that suit and the countersuit he filed as she is actually the one defaming him.
For fuck's sake, get over yourselves. So you took a picture, and someone liked it and used it. Do you honestly think that you're something special when you click the button on your camera? How about the people who designed and built the structures you took the picture of? What about the restaurant that created the meal you snapped a picture of? (author of post). What if these people demanded royalties or some other form of attribution that they pull out of their asses? They CAN'T, luckily for you. (Though they do try in some countries)
I have taken pictures and one of them comes to mind. I didn't think a lot of it at the time, it was a picture of the sun setting over an island with a lighthouse, in the early spring when the ice was breaking up. Pink sky, reflecting on the ice. Yes, I stood in exactly the right place and focused the camera to get the best shot I could, to capture that effect. It was quite a nice picture and I was happy that a bunch of people liked it and used it. They don't need my fucking permission... I put it on the Internet and they took it.
Something special does happen when you press that button. That image that results becomes yours and you get to decide when, how, and whom else can use it. That is your right as the person the took the photo. As for the subject of the photo if is visible from a public area, well they actually have no rights, and the photographer does NOT have to ask permission before the photo is taken. A person, or owner of a building, does not own the light that reflects of off them/it or so says the Supreme Court of the US. How else do you think tabloids get to publish all those pics of celebrities, or how people can take a photo in Times Square without asking the thousands of people in the background for permission.
As for your pics, if you want to put them in the public domain for anyone to use, that's your choice. But your choices DO NOT apply to me unless you became emperor of the world and I missed it.
One legal threat--fine. Crazy lady escalating over and over again with no further interaction without ever stopping--not so fine.
He sends DMCA notices, then he gets threated to be sued over crap and he gets scared?
Why the fuck did he sent the DMCA notices to begin with, if he wasn't prepared to stand his ground? All he's doing is giving this other person ammo and basicly permission to be a cunt with other peoples properties.
Candice Shwagger is a bully, you stand up to bullies.
Ya, bitch, sue me, stupid cunt.
Be seeing you...
Nobody suggested anything of the sort and you know it. Strawman arguments are lies.
and we are supposed to feel sorry for him when someone lashes back at him? He is a jerk!
Can you spell psycho? I would have fought this; that woman is a nutcase!
>>> from the graduation party that were partially taken without the consent of the pictured individuals
Permission is not needed in a public area or publicly-open facility (mall, restaurant, etc). If it was a private area like my graduation party (friend's home), then they were trespassing and you can demand the negatives. If they refuse file a lawsuit for trespassing without permission (which leads to jail time, not just copyright infringement).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
This b***h honestly reminds me of my ex, who studied criminilogy and thought that put her on a higher tier than everyone else.
She now works at an outsourced call center, taking calls for an insurance company. She's been there, full time, for over four years now and her student loans from the one year she actually attended calsses, part time, still outweigh the total of her gross income from this job.
I'd feel bad for her if she wasn't a stuck-up b***h. Instead, I feel bad for her daughter.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I don't have much sympathy for either party. Only a raging asshole STARTS the conversation with a DMCA takedown. The rather shrill response from the target of the shutdown does dampen my sympathy for her a good bit though.
No because you're still an ignorant boob, even though people have explained this again-and-again.
- The owner files the DMCA.
- The target says, "I'm not infringing anything."
- The DMCA notice is automatically negated and the target's takendown photo or video is restored in mere hours.
Easy as that.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
With so much overwhelming support for Mr. Lee and so much vitriol against the unstable Ms. Shwagger, there should be at least one voice questioning the matter...
If you read TFA you might note that Jay Lee may have a connection to the political candidate Candice hates so much. You will also note his connection with the newspaper, but not his role (does he or his close associates report on politics?).
We can't really determine from the information he has provided whether there is any ulterior motive for his takedown notice.
He seems to have sent notices to other infringers- but how many? Five or fifty? If five then one might possibly suspect that he was out to get her or the political candidate she supports. He seems surprised that GoDaddy would shut down her sites; but how can we be sure he didn't know?
Not saying it's true, and I admit that he sounds like a reasonable person, but with all the words flying around there is still a shortage of solid information or assurances to defend his innocence.
...omphaloskepsis often...
One can both respect copyright while still deploring powerful groups that abuse those same rules to crush people who can't defend themselves.
One other important difference. This is a recent photo, not some decades old recording that's become a part of our shared culture. One can believe there should be limits on copyrights without thinking they should be eliminated.
Not that she isn't batshit crazy, but your labelling of her as "leftist" tells us more about your political leanings than hers. When a USian uses that word to describe someone else, the rest of the world understands that as a self-proclamation as "another US frothing right wing extremist". I was going to add "and giggles", but this mental illness affecting a third of Americans is no longer a laughing matter, if it ever was.
took essentially the same picture from the same bridge?
Sweet I'm a little short this month can we share your paycheck to pay my bills? I'm not going to pay you back or anything but you seem to like to share everything? What's your wife look like? Share her too?
I took the photo, I didn't copy the structure or the meal. If I had copied a structure in exact detail, I would expect to be sued. As for the meal, the written form of a recipe can be protected by copyright, but the finished product is an artistic work of its own right; much like the written lyrics and music to a song can be protected by copyright, but it's perfectly legal to perform a cover of someone else's song, since that performance is a separate artistic work.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
He has taken his page down. Right will I was reading his comments.
She is sure a piece of work
Are you seriously this retarded?
Because she's batshit insane and has the biggest entitlement complex I've ever seen. She's classic Tea Party (her facebook page has "impeach Barry Saotoro aka Barack Obama" liked, which is the least surprising thing about her).
Her first reaction to not getting her way was to wail like a spoiled child, and then you could sense the cogs turning in her mind as she got her way (the guy retracted the DMCA request and got her sites restored when he didn't have to) and then she went into an entitlement rage.
I don't think her daddy has ever said no to her. It tends to create entitled cunts who act like they've been *viciously* wronged when someone points out they have done something they're not supposed to have done, and then tries to justify it as right purely because she did it.
The fact that she's worked closely with actual attorneys is even more hilarious given that she wants to sue this guy for a long list of random complaints - presumably whatever she could think up on the spot. She'll be laughed out of court so hard that the judge will probably have a hernia, but it's just a shame that Jay Lee will have to waste time getting it all sorted out.
Does anyone know what might happen if he did make a complaint to the state bar?
It would, if you weren't basing that assertion on a false dichotomy.
Heh. Actually, he'd done that, to that same photo, a while ago...
http://www.baldheretic.com/2008/07/27/sabine-street-bridge
This sig intentionally left justified.
There were two issues here - ethics (morality?) and monetary compensation.
If you sold the pic, the money issue is done. Even if the pic is later lifted, you were compensated for the pic and can no longer expect further profits.
ethically speaking - you are still entitled to full credits, no matter how much the customer paid.
If you think you only sold a single copy, non-transferable rights - shame on you. Next time set the value to however much you expected the pic to generate over the copyright lifetime.
You can decide what side of things to put me on.
I believe that in responsibility lies strength.
That "a job" is better than "a check".
That children need parents.
That people you can not fire will not do a good job.
That politicians want power.
That if you reward something you will get more of it.
That if you punish something you will get less of it.
That prosecuting a "War" on a weed is a losing battle.
That if you think that life begins when a sperm meets an egg you are an idiot.
That if you think that inconvenience means that you can kill a baby 2 min before it is born you are evil.
That even though sometimes it gets in the way of what you want the constitution still has real worth.
That politically correct speech is a fancy term for not telling the truth.
That the ADA has done more harm than good.
That when the law becomes so complex that you need a professional to defend you justice can not be served.
That politics should never be a career.
and
That we have the government we deserve.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
As a lawyer, she should have known that to get her sites reinstated all she had to do was contact GoDaddy herself and file a claim of non-violation of the DMCA, at which point GoDaddy are required to reinstate the site while the 2 parties let the courts nut it out. As PEr the terms of the DMCA, upon initial filing of the takedown GoDaddy have to disable access to the content. But the onus is then on the would-be defendant to dispute the charge to reinstate access and which point it's out of GoDaddy's hands and up to the courts unless both parties decide to settle the matter themselves.
Lesson 1: caring about peoples feelings on the internet is dumb.
Lesson 2: IM SUING ALL OF YOU, OMG BETTER GET REALLY UPSET
... they want their Streisand Effect back
I never expected to read a story where the DMCA was actually used properly and could be used to "protect the little guy." It's amusing that he also managed to stumble upon a bees nest with a crazy queen running it. Talk about paranoid and simply out of control. Unforunately, I know people like that... funnier when it happens to other people.
If it were me, I'd be more than willing to settle matters like adults. But as soon as the other party merely THREATENS a lawsuit, then it is clear THEY do NOT want to settle.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Why should the presence of something on the Internet automatically be regarded as permission to copy and redistribute it? What about the Internet makes that right?
Mrs. Timecube?
Barbra Streisand attacks attacks again.
As God is my witness, I would never want this woman as my lawyer for anything after her display of this. Nor would I want any candidate that she would ever support. For the thief to be crying foul is the most foul deed of all.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Um, she is a lawyer?!?!
She signs up for a service (web hosting and domain registration) with a company and AGREES TO THE COMPANY'S POSTED TERMS OF SERVICE which include notice that the service can be shut down by the company for any of a number of reasons, copyright infringement being one of them. Then, having agreed to not use the company's hosting for illegal activities (including copyright infringement) she goes out and infringes on a host of others' copyrighted properties. I say, let her sue, countersue and take EVERYTHING SHE OWNS. She deserves to be living out of a cardboard box. Dastardly is the word I use for this type, dastardly.
Is the first line in the article with the stolen burger picture. Funny stuff.
If she gives good head, she might win the case. Sex trump *all*.
Is this how brutal you treated that long list of hotels using the same photo? You can't say it was only on Flickr if it's everywhere. Overboard
This copyright violation of posted photos is much more prevelant than copying movies and songs.. Sorry **AA. Even large sites are guilty of this. I posted some photos of a redneck project on a hobby site and found the page and my Youtube vidoe of the item was posted on Make!. Where does fair use end reporting this and where does commercial copyright violations begin?
It would have been neat to have received a request to use the material. The free publicity was great. My Youtube views spiked.
The photos, the video, and much of the text copied from the site was my creation.
I did not make any issue of the violation. I would have granted permission if they asked and was honored that my work was worthy of inclusion in their site. It was annoying that they didn't even try to contact me first.
The truth shall set you free!
. So now everyone needs to jump through legal hoops to share things? Ridiculous.
If they don't own them, then yes.
Ok, what if someone ELSE puts it on the internet?
A surprising amount of time just asking before publishing and posting a photo credit is all it takes to get permission, especially if your an individual or a non-profit.
Sure... Except in this case the photo was being used for a company.
She really contradicts her self!
"Candice Schwager says:
May 8, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Great piece! Rest assured, LM, Mr. Jennings is not biased. Educate yourself by reading before blind accusation. I have the unique perspective of knowing Louis Guthrie since High School and being a lawyer, who has great respect for Judge Caroline Baker and the Appellate Courts. Read the decisions before you shoot the messenger! Mr. Jennings reported what happened in Courts, hardly bias. Sorry you didn’t like the outcome. Whose campaign are you working? Curious?"
Blind accusation???
Rule 8.4 Misconduct
It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:
(a) violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist or induce another to do so, or do so through the acts of another;
(b) commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects;
(c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation;
While her nonprofit work might be commendable, what this woman is doing is abusing the power she has as an attorney. It's possible she's also violating Rules 3.1 http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_3_1_meritorious_claims_contentions.html, 4.1 http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_4_1_truthfulness_in_statements_to_others.html, and/or others.
I'm sure it will get a lot of chuckles, but practicing lawyers cannot simply make things up, threaten people with actions they know (or at least that a competent attorney would know) are devoid of merit, or knowingly make a false claim. Such as "You cost me thousands in billable time and I could sue you. You are fortunate it came back up because..."
It's the kind of weasel hedge you'd expect from a crank, but one a Bar disciplinary committee could see through in a second. Because while technically she could sue (technically you can bring suit for just about anything), as an attorney she knows perfectly well that she cannot file frivolous claims and expect to escape sanction.
She needs to be checked, hard.
she has a linkedin profile as well
http://www.linkedin.com/in/candiceleonardschwager
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Feel free to inform them. IANAL so I don't know the procedure, but simply informing them then allowing them to decide for themselves can't hurt:
http://www.texasbar.com/am/template.cfm?section=home
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It sounds like for this case, copyright could be the means to a good outcome. Nevertheless the concept of intellectual property is seriously flawed.
How do I find out who uses my pictures on the internet?
Why should a photographer have to do that in order to receive some compensation? That's a great example of why copyright doesn't work.
It's even worse from the other end. How is a user to find and compensate a photographer? Most people do want to help, want to show appreciation and gratitude, but it's not so easy. It's absolutely ridiculous and criminal that we haven't made this easy to do. We've responded to this genuine problem by letting the special interests throw users into the same category as mooches and thieves. We let them assume the worst, and they have. They've let the moralizing rip, calling us all thieves, pirates, cheats, irresponsible children, destroyers of art and culture, and more. That's not solving anything. Imagine if the WalMart greeter wagged fingers at every customer, telling us all to behave ourselves, dress appropriately, and don't shoplift, vandalize, start a fight, etc. It wouldn't be long before every WalMart shopper got sick of being treated in such a demeaning fashion, and took their shopping elsewhere.
Why should a user have to work so hard to meet such a tiny obligation? There's a lot of friction in the very messy process of compensating artists. Can't we come up with something better? Yes, yes we can. But for now, they've resorted to blaming and suing the customer over their own failure to adopt a viable business model.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Yeah, but she claims she'd never heard of the DMCA. Which clearly means that if she's a lawyer she's a pretty shitty one.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Had it been music, games, or heaven forbid..... Software.... This site would have crucified you.... I guess photographers' rights are different.
Not to mention the photographer (as far as we know), did not lobby for 100 year copyright terms and did not steal (RIAA's definition of steal of course) from the public of works that should have been public domain.
The DMCA is a bad law and he's a bad person for using it. Further, he knew that GoDaddy overreacts to DMCA notices, and he used one _anyway_ for a GoDaddy site, which makes him an even worse person.
Why should we or anyone else believe her claims? Does she offer legit proof of her claims? She just threatens? I can't find her listed as a member of the bar, but I have little knowledge on these issues. If someone would please clarify. I used info/claims from her linkedin profile, and just search her on the state bar website. I'm just thinking it is easier to make a bunch of websites claiming any what all you want and threaten people, than it is to do actual work. Maybe it is all true, and I'm a jerk for not believing it. By why should I? If i wanted sympathy disabled children is just ahead of orphan, blind puppies. And she is from Texas . . . http://www.linkedin.com/in/candiceleonardschwager Just my (reasoned, somewhat) speculations. -dr:u
Ahhh but she also claims she is an attorney on her linkedin profile, which I submit she is not, as she is not a member of the bar, (look it up yourself, just punch in her name.) http://www.linkedin.com/in/candiceleonardschwager "Attorney / Consultant at The Schwager Law Firm" and "Bachelor of Arts, Psychology; Philosophy 1992 – 1994" and double major B.A.'s in 2 years? I highly doubt it.
Because she is a hardcore Right-Wing-NUT !!!
What the heck has happened to the Republican Party? Mad Cow disease, from all that red meat?
What a load of histrionic bullshit. Gitmo? Are you fucking kidding me? You're really lacking an argument so much you have to pull that out? Call him a Nazi child molester and seal the deal while your at it.
Nah, Gitmo is sufficient. Looks like it's time for The Gitmo Law - Like Godwin's Law, but with Gitmo.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
It is a work of art. That is an absolute and irrefutable fact, and you know it. You cannot disagree with it, and you're lying when you claim to.
You are shrieking in impotent rage at your monitor because you are furious with me for forcing you to face the flimsy little lie you told yourself.
You will now prove me right, and bring further humiliation upon yourself.
They both seem reprehensible to me. I hope they make life difficult for each other. I love this nonchalant line from the "victim":
"I have been sending DMCA take-down notices on so many sites it was becoming an cookie cutter assembly line process".
"Victim 1"
You took a picture. You weren't selling it. You just took a picture and people used it. For that they get their special-needs children's websites yanked. Douche.
"Victim 2"
You could have just asked nicely after the take down. I know it was a dick move to have your 14 sites shut down, but a nice plea may have made the Grinch's heart grow three sizes that day. This crazy bullshit? Come on.
MC
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
The woman is insane. Probably not even a real lawyer. She has other presumably stolen photos on her blog. Check out this one:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oL9i7Eh_9x4/TzDcqEe5WPI/AAAAAAAAD80/0dDyPERWP4M/s1600/win.jpg
Then look here: http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=1192820 Notice how the crop conveniently removes the watermark?
And really... does she have permission to use Winnie the Pooh and Dr. Suess images?
...lawyers, claiming ignorance of the DMCA is a bit of a stretch. Even if none of the lawyers working for this non-profit aren't specialists in "intellectual property", they ought to know what the DMCA is and that using someone else's work without attribution is wrong regardless of whether you knew where it came from or not. If you couldn't find the photographer's name, you would, at the very least, attribute the web site from where you downloaded the image. Heck, at least then the rightful owner would know where to direct their takedown notice. But this wasn't just some obscure web site where the image was found. It was freakin' Flickr! After trying to follow the Joyce-like stream of consciousness writing on this woman's web site, I got the impression that she thinks that what you find on Flickr is free for reuse. Didn't read the either the "Community Guidelines" or the FAQ, it appears. The terms of using someone's photo seem pretty clear to me: request to license the image. I'd think that not bothering to do that would have that little voice that most of us have in our heads saying "don't use it".
Non-profit? Doesn't really matter now, does it. Wrong is wrong whether you're a non-profit or not. Just because you're working with special needs kids isn't a free pass. I have friends with special needs kids or relatives. They don't use that as an excuse to, say, take stuff from the grocery store without paying for it.
(Reminder to self: don't post photographs online unless I a.) want to retain a lawyer to write nasty takedown letters to bozos who think they're free, b.) make sure that the online version is of low enough quality that I won't care too much if someone's stupid enough to use it or, c.) watermark the hell out of any image that is posted so that any theft is obvious.)
Wish I had the chance to be your champion: take the lead in totally disabling that lady in every possible way and dare her to do whatever. Perhaps we could duel with pistols. I hate people like that and have always run straight at them and their threats barehanded, whether they had chains and knives, guns and tanks, or lawyers and politicians. So far they have run from me lol.
(It’s a street thing. Act absolutely certain you are about to kill your enemy if they so much as think a thought you don’t approve of, and they will generally consider that there may just be some chance that you really can and really would).
No you don't. You try to laugh, but it's forced and akward.
You hate him for standing up for himself, because in doing so he reminds you that you are too chickenshit to ever do so. You wanted to do something about your photos being appropriated by others, but the thought of confronting them made you literally piss yourself in terror, so you tried to comfort yourself by pretending not to care.
But it didn't work; you've been ashamed of yourself all this time, and rightly so. And you'll never escape it. You'll spend the rest of your pathetic failure of a life trying ineptly to project your craven meekness onto those who force you to face it, and you'll never even succeed in fooling yourself, much less anyone with a functioning brain.
Uh-oh, now she's after me: https://twitter.com/Bostonglobalz/status/206188080007348225
...I really need to go see the Avengers again. I could watch Scarlet own Loki and Hawkeye twenty times over.
It still doesn't change the fact that it's a picture of burgers, not valuable art. Note that I don't care about your silly laws, so don't try and justify your pettiness with that.
I know you are "allowed" to take pictures of things that other people create.
I dunno, pictures of soup cans can be valuable art, why picture of burger can't? It sure has value for authors of review, as they chose to use it on some merits and saved their own valuable time instead of, you know, grabbing a cam and going to a fastfood. Anyone could have done a good shot of burgers, rite? It's not like photography takes skill and experience or something.
We steal her photo and re-post it on every non-profit site that'll host it? When she complains/DMCAs them, have them send her a boiler-plate response (or a link to Jay's site) in her own words!
Or just let 4chan have a go at it. I'd love to see her file millions of takedown notices.
This, incidentally, is the way most psycho-bitches work: they do ONE good thing (special needs kids), and they think it entitles them to do any damn thing they want.
Crazy fsck.
I am not opposed to copyright but to its misappropriation by the entertainment industries which do not create anything but insert themselves between the creators and the public. Are you unable to acknowledge that the world is not in black or white?
Far more polite to say she is a far right winger attempting to make use of charity washing (hiding behind and attempting to profit from charities that provide very little actual charity) in her get rich quick specialist SEO attorney scheme/scam and a swag of not very good cross linked web sites. Her carefully fabricated narcissistic delusions of becoming a multimillionaire SEO attorney were threatened by a DMCA notice and godaddys over reaction and shutting down of her dream/delusion, with the expected psychologically disturbed result.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It has nothing to do with trespassing, it has to do with the guys attitude. You could argue that he had to factor his working time in the price of the pictures, so a high price is to be expected. But, the sad truth is, nobody cares how much time he invested in taking the photos. All it maters is whether you are willing to pay that price for a piece of paper with your face printed on it. And holding on to the original digital files as if they were some sort of valuable asset (dude, it is not a photo that will be on the cover of the TIME magazine, it's just somebody's graduation party) doesn't make him a professional "protecting his copyright". All it makes him is an asshole. As if anyone would be willing to buy two copies of the same picture for his price! The pictures that we bought were promptly scanned and shared with friends and none of us bothered to check whether that was technically legal or not.
Candice Schwager and Paul Andrew Mitchell, two nuts off of the same tree
I don't understand why everyone is so pissed at the Crazy Lady and very few comment on GoDaddy's insane policy!
Who in their right mind would host a site on GoDaddy if someone can take down ALL YOUR SITES without warning just by sending GoDaddy a DMCA. Yes, in this case it was at least a valid DMCA, but a malicious person could send a fake one that does seem valid on first sight.
The OP did not abuse the DMCA (he could have sent a simple email to the site owners first - but the big companies send DMCAs en masse, why should a person wronged refrain), but GoDaddy is abusing it. Would it be hard to implement a warning, or to remove just the image/page? Or in the end take down just one site?
Imagine if you provide the sites for many clients and use GoDaddy to host them. If one of them gets a DMCA, all your clients will be screwed.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Agreed, MS can download (most likely has already) and can do whatever they want with it within the limits of the license.
MS has made contributions to GPL'd software in the past. The difference in this case is that the picture was not used according to the license it was under.
If someone produces something, they should have the right to be acknowledged as the creator, and be able to make a dollar from their creation if someone is willing to pay for its use. If it is worth stealing, most likely its worth paying for. If the author charges too much, well, then not many folks will pay for it. We need to find a balance here, make it easy to pay, and keep the cost reasonable. If buying something is less hassle than pirating it, guess what most folks will do.
Sounds like she has Querulous Paranoia (also known as a Vexatious litigant), people with it can be extremely effective advocates for minority and disadvantaged groups (they identify with the weak and vulnerable) but their tendency towards paranoia means they will waste their time obsessively suing people who they feel are attacking them or opposing their political/social agenda. Querulous Paranoia may stem from Paranoid Personality Disorder.
Mullen, P. E. and Lester, G., 2006. Vexatious litigants and unusually persistent complainants and petitioners: From querulous paranoia to querulous behaviour, Behavioral sciences & the law, 24(3), 333-349.
There are just as many "entitled cunts" that are politically opposed to the Tea Party - Maxine Waters comes to mind. Her political views here are immaterial to the first part of your post "Because she's batshit insane" - plenty of insane people on both sides of the aisle. Someone being a stupid nutjob is one thing, but using such a person in a straw-man argument against any of their other beliefs is a major logical fallacy that BOTH sides of the aisle need to stop if we are to have any hope of productive political discourse in the future.
Yes, she is clearly an unbalanced individual, and deserves the proper scorn for that. Her political beliefs, however, should be taken as secondary. If you want to argue politics, argue with facts and figures, not with caricatures and extreme examples. It is actions like these that are the reason that political discourse has degenerated to an even lower low than normal.
tl;dr - Batshit insane woman who believes X does not equal X is a batshit insane belief.
The difference between converse and contrapositive - learn it!
tools given to me is a shotgun, should i shoot my neighbors for the loud music? No? Call the police you say? Ask them to turn it down? Naw, nuke from orbit, i wont say anything just rip them apart.
False equivalence, murder and mass murder are not equal to a website service disruption. Next argument.
Suing is waaaay better. Site stays up, court decides, pay a judgement and you're done. As a website owner I would MUCH rather fight in court than watch the site go down for even a day.
Lawsuit, Step 1, injunction to stop ongoing infringement. Site is now down by court order, restore process now involves court schedule. Next argument.
ripping a business website off the internet is probably the worse thing you can do to a online business, hence nuke from orbit.
A very good point. I suggest we ask GoDaddy why they did that. Next argument.
I'm incredibly shocked the entire internet hasn't turned on this asshole and post every photo he's ever taken all over every website on earth.
Because he was right and his actions were, while a little harsh, justified and correct. GoDaddy was the group that overreacted. Next argument.
Screw this prick.
Your sexual preferences are not relevant to this discussion.
I'm sorry, but Tea Party = batshit insane.
Well, ok, to be accurate, most of those *behind* the Tea Party are not batshit insane - they're well funded, powerful and very ood at propaganda.
Those duped into believing the Tea Party has their interests at heart (ie, anyone not in the top 0.5% of income earners) is just voting against their interests.
The key thing to note here is that the Tea Party itself does not mean "all Republicans", although the current problem the GOP has is that it laid down in bed with the batshit crazy folks and now can't get away.
For the record on her side of things, she endorses pages about impeaching Obama (due to him being a non-white, muslim, non-American illegal occupant of the White House), not because of any of his policies or actions. Well, unless you count "being a Democrat" - and even that's debatable - he's pretty centrist, but then being centre right is being "socialist" according to the Tea Party....
This story is HI larious. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=conny_permission
"If you want to argue politics, argue with facts and figures, not with caricatures and extreme examples. It is actions like these that are the reason that political discourse has degenerated to an even lower low than normal."
"I'm sorry, but Tea Party = batshit insane."
The prosecution rests.
on her site ilawyer.com I found a nice picture at the top (looked a bit familiar) so I googled it using the image tool.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&source=web&cd=12&ved=0CFoQFjAL&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2009%2F06%2F22%2Fjohnny-depp-as-mad-hatter_n_218747.html&ei=3vfAT7TpHtCK6QGhnKDICg&usg=AFQjCNHSZsUb3Bh-JNcPUBsCSM1Svy5sfg
Can you say this dizzy bitch is using a photo of Anne Hathaway from an upcoming as yet unreleased film as if it were her own?
DISNEY has real lawyers and they will make short work of this wanna-be.
Also, posting on the Flickr photo sharing site, like may people, opens you up to having your photos stolen. Seems lots of people think if they find a photo on the Internet, it's free to use any way they want to. Few people ask for permission or even give you credit!
That's not a fact at all.
Yoiu're pretty uninformed for an American at this point if you haven't at least HEARD of the DMCA in this point in time. Being a Lawyer just makes it inexcusable.
Sorry, but it is.
They are arguing a platform of craziness, and it's been the worst thing that has happened to the GOP - they've been sucked into this in the wake of their defeat to Obama in 2008 and have quickly realised it has been a gigantic mistake. The fact that no serious GOP candidate wanted to run for the presidency is evidence.
It's difficult to argue with facts and figures against the Tea Party because they are simply so absurd. The group that wants to force the US to default like a crazy guy holding a grenade saying "do what I want or I blow you up" is simply not a party to take seriously.
The sooner the GOP ditches them and gets back to what it *really* believes in, the better US politics will be as a whole for both sides of the political spectrum.
Again, your complete lack of facts and figures represents the core of my argument. Back up your statement with hard facts, not generalized platitudes.
When you assert that something is "batshit insane" the burden of proof is upon you. Avoiding specifics, spouting talking points, the 30-second sound bite - great for TV ratings, horrible for the credibility of your argument. A simple google search will pull up all sorts of information, and your lack of desire to even do that demonstrates all that is wrong.
If someone were to say "I believe that X is true. Facts Y, Z, A, B and C prove that to be the case" then you have put forth a cogent argument, and true discussion can take place. Until then, you are simply pissing in the wind, proving by example that you are just as much a part of the system you supposedly rail against. Whether the coin comes up heads or tails, it's still the same coin. We need to change the coin, not which face is pointing up at the end of the election. Only through reasoned argument backed up by specifics, followed by independent decisions made by informed, educated individuals can we get that to happen. There is a huge difference between "I believe Argument X is wrong and here is why" and "I believe argument X is wrong, therefore anyone who believes argument X is batshit insane."
Hopefully you will someday realize the difference, along with more people, and the true revolution can begin.
Until then, enjoy being wrong on the internet.
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/386/
As a photographer who has spent years honing his skills, fuck you.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oh, also... comprehension fail; I wasn't talking about taking a picture of a meal or a building, go read it again. Derp.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The Tea Party is wrong on the internet - there's enough material out there to fill several libraries of congress. I've argued with enough Tea Partiers to know how this goes - If I give you links that provide proof of a position that you disagree with, you'll attack the credibility of those links, and thus dismiss the evidence out of hand, then continue to bray about lack of evidence. Of course, any links that validate the Tea Party are taken as gospel truth, and any criticism of the source is "baseless un-american ad hominem".
The Tea Party advocated defaulting on the debt in a game of chicken in order to force their terms on everyone else. This is fact, look it up from any source.
The Tea Party gives us quotes like these (I'll just grab a couple, feel free to determine their veracity - they have been recorded and noted in many places), and yet still want to be taken seriously:
"I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." —Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, floating the possibility of armed insurrection in a radio interview, Jan. 2010
'We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we're having weekly shootings practically. We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS." —Christine O'Donnell, during a 1998 appearance on Bill Maher's 'Politically Incorrect'"
"People ask me, 'What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?' Well, that's not my job as a U.S. senator." —Sharron Angle, May 14, 2010
"I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade." —Sharron Angle, explaining why she is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest, July 8, 2010
"I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it." —Rand Paul, taking issue with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while arguing that government should not prevent private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, May 21, 2010
"We needed to have the press be our friend ... We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported." —Sharron Angle, during an interview with Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron, Aug. 2, 2010
So, racist, sexist, theocratic, zero financial sense, and wanting to turn the media into a directed soapbox.
I'll take "things that are batshit crazy" for $200 Alex.
I have a 1px by 1px image (#ffffff). Can I consider this copyrighted?
For Linux: GPL (the "L" standing for "Licence"). Microsoft is able to take the kernel and do what every it pleases their ass as long they don't try to sell the result.
Heh, yeah it is true. The copyright infringing lawyer simulator is just another freeloading right wing teabagger. They don't respect copyright laws, game laws, the constitution, women who aren't barefoot and pregnant or much of anything else. The whackjob probably has been standing out in the rain too long and needs to change the teabag on it's forehead.
What you describe is an aspect of copyright law that needs to be fixed. In many jurisdictions photography is never a work for hire, so you get these ridiculous situations where your wedding photographer can hold you to random. The law needs to be clear that photography may be a work for hire, and the conditions under which it is a work for hire, then the owner is (correctly) the person or organisation that hired the photographer.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
You need to take your medication now, and tell your mother that you should not be using the internet when un-medicated.
How does GP's post argue against that? GP's post actually supports that. Instead of trying to talk with this person, they went straight to a DMCA takedown notice.
Is it legal? Sure. But it makes you look like a child. How many times have you yourself berated others for moderating you down instead of talking to you about what was wrong with your post?
Ah, yes, "presumption of guilt until proven innocent" is definitely a good process.
So it's okay if you get sent to Gauntanamo for a few months so long as they let you out once they believe that you're innocent?
https://plus.google.com/photos/118265322862921729635/albums/profile/5749611773134810386
You don't often find people bragging about being a bitch. The funny thing is she is wading knee deep into the internet while claiming to be a social networking expert. Ouch, not with pictures like that on your personal easily searchable page.
http://atty4kids.org/ is offline again as of noon Sunday.
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache Server at atty4kids.org Port 80
Seems that atty4kids has gone to 404 land. Interesting, that.
This sig no verb.