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Student Photographer Threatened With Suspension For Sports Photos
sandbagger writes: Anthony Mazur is a senior at Flower Mound High School in Texas who photographed school sports games and other events. Naturally he posted them on line. A few days ago he was summoned to the principal's office and threatened with a suspension and 'reporting to the IRS' if he didn't take those 4000 photos down. Reportedly, the principal's rationale was that the school has copyright on the images and not him.
Unless photography rights was part of a contract (either student handbook or admission ticket), the principal is smoking crack and has no claim to them.
That said, the kid is probably a minor and can not enter into binding contracts without parental consent.
This is true. There is another side to this. The school is so afraid of being sued they create lawsuits trying to 'fix' the issue. So he used that excuse to go on a powertrip over a kid. Working on the yearbook... Which makes you think was one of those 4k the principal doing something he shouldnt be?
Is this "evil student" charging, or making ad revenue, for views of said photos? Is the lighting on campus somehow owned by the school district and they forgot to charge for it? Just have some CS students wipe out the principal's iPhone, and he'll have something more important to do than not understand Fair Use media.
I'd say put them under a password and then not offer them to the yearbook crew. Everyone copyright your memory! Let's copyright old cigarette butts and empty bags of potato chips! IP is IP!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
If you bothered to read the article, or the summary above, you might notice that there's no threat of a lawsuit, only of a suspension. The burden (and expense) of filing a lawsuit would be on the kid (and his parents). And while they might win, odds are, they couldn't possibly hope to recover the $100k+ in legal fees.
there's no threat of a lawsuit, only of a suspension.
if there is no threat of a lawsuit, which is the only legal mechanism that the school can use to have the pictures taken down, then the school would not have threatened the kid with suspension. The suspension is not a legal relief for the posting of the photographs, a lawsuit is.
Which is the reason there was recently a story about a photographer that claimed copyright on a photograph that a monkey took of itself using the photographers camera. There was no copyright on the photograph because the one that took the photo isn't eligible for copyright.
Just as in this case, even if the school owns the camera, the paper and all the developing gear the student still owns the copyright. The only possible way the school could even hope to claim copyright would be by declaring that the student was doing work for hire. Needless to say the courts aren't going to look on that line of thought very highly given the lack of paycheck and the compulsory nature of school.
As a former troublemaker, I never understood how suspension is a punishment. I considered a three day vacation from school to be supreme good fortune.
You're, apparently, not the only one and why one of my English teachers got her Ph.D. on the concept of Saturday Suspension in the late-1960s, early-1970s, where you have to go to school on Saturday (or a series of Saturdays) as punishment. I really disliked Dr. Kershes!