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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.
So, another thread about some random clueless school principal.
Look, the vast majority of us (at least the non-ACs) have already graduated from high school. We know that your average principal has to check the school policy manual to figure out which leg to put in the trouser first. And then they mess it up half the time anyway.
Not much to see here. Some lawyer will be around presently to wack some sense into the the school district.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
Threats of lawsuits are mostly idle. Call his bluff and see what happens when the ACLU gets involved and crowfunding his defense sends the principal looking for a new job..
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
Dear Principal,
Do you really want to bring this kind of publicity to you and the school you're representing? I'm pretty sure that you won't be able to handle the backlash, and you might actually have to resign or ... get fired.
Unless you have a Board adopted policy, predating the photographs, you're in a really tough position.
Sincerely,
The Internet Community.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Content Rights are like 50% of Slashdot posts...
Well, he clearly owns the copyright on the photographs, so if anyone wants to contest that they are SOL. The privacy concern is legitimate if and only if the pictures were taken in an area where there was an expectation of privacy. A sporting event with people in the stands cheering certainly doesn't seem like a private event...
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?
This guy would be -any- yearbook adviser's dream to have. Look at his photos...they're incredible. He gets in close to his subject, captures the action vividly, and makes very good use of lighting. And for a sophomore? Simply amazing.
This district is handling the situation all wrong. Regardless of whether or not they can or cannot make a claim to the ownership of the photos, they should be lifting this young man up for the talent he has and putting him on a pedestal. Enter him into national photography competitions. Get national recognition for his work, and put the trophies in your trophy case. And make him proud of his talent. He deserves it.
Suing him? Simply ridiculous.
Most professional sports teams copyright their games. Even tweeting the score can get you in trouble. I guess this is no different.
can we count the differences?
professional sports teams play in private settings where access is limited to ticket holders
professional sports teams are paid for their work, they have signed contracts explicitly detailing their rights to their likeness in photographs and other media
high school sports teams play in public settings where anyone is free to view and take pictures
high school athletes are not paid for their work, they have not signed any contractual agreements governing the distribution of their likeness in photographs
if joe sports reporter is free to take pictures for the newspaper
if the parents are free to take photos of their own children
then surely the students are free to take pictures
No. It does not work like that. If you borrow my guitar and write a hit song, it's your song, the copyright is yours. If you borrow my camera and take a Pulitzer-winning photo, it's your photo, the copyright is yours. Copyright goes to the creator of a work, not to the owner of any tools incidental to the creation.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
Funny. Where I am, public schools (which aren't unionized because public employees aren't allowed to unionize in our state) have better pay for teachers and more resources for the students than private schools, but they also have a higher ratio of impoverished students to rich students and end up scoring consequently less on standardized tests.
Because, in the end, school performance has jack shit to do with teachers or minor funding differences and everything to do with the parents, whether or not they taught the kids to read early and life and whether they continue to expect good academics of the kids. Frankly, it doesn't matter whether you send your kid to private school, a public charter, a talented-and-gifted program inside a normal public school, or what have you, so long as it requires some minor, token effort to get your kid into that school or program instead of the default, lowest-common-denominator stream, where you find the kids whose parents just don't give a damn. Schools are a giant switch block, and any case statement is better than the default.
Threats of lawsuits are mostly idle. Call his bluff and see what happens when the ACLU gets involved and crowfunding his defense sends the principal looking for a new job..
Don't call his bluff.
A principal has all kinds of power over your life as a student. Litigation takes time. And a principal can easily destroy your chances of getting into college or tarnish your record (before litigation can straighten everything out)
Get a school board parent on your side, preferably someone with a law degree, or married to someone with a law degree. Or barring that, find a regular parent at your school with a law degree. The principal won't refuse to talk to a parent, especially someone who appears neutral and who appears to know what he's talking about.
If the principal still doesn't want to listen to reason, I suppose the student could file an injunction to prevent retaliatory actions against him by the Principal, but that should really be his last resort. These types of misunderstandings usually work themselves out by getting enough parents on your side, without ever needing to go to court.
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.
The school owned the camera he used. Therefore all work from that camera belongs to the school. If he had used is own camera, then they are his to keep.
Just like in the work place, any personal data on company computers used on company time belong to The Company and not you.
Maybe read the article next time? The school board's policy is that students retain the ownership of works they create even when using school equipment and supplies. Says so right in the article.
Most professional sports teams copyright their games. Even tweeting the score can get you in trouble.
Only if you're a player or party to an agreement that prohibits tweeting the score.
They only own copyright to the media they produce.
Incorrect. The game is played on posted grounds. The school charges an admission fee to the game. Many Texas schools have agreements with local TV/Radio Stations for broadcast rights. The public school in Texas that my son attends states right in the school handbook that photos of students taken on school property require a release from the students parent before being published in a public forum.
The school owned the camera he used. Therefore all work from that camera belongs to the school.
What's your next guess?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The real story is that this guy was selling the photos. And he was using school provided equipment. And he wasn't paying taxes.
Selling the photos online isn't a crime. The conditions he was allowed to use the school equipment under allowed him to retain his copyrights, and he didn't sign an agreement promising not to sell photos for money.
Most likely, no taxes are due; he obviously hasn't been running this for years, probably less than 6 months. In order for taxes to be due and unpaid, he would have to be successful in his sales and profit from them, AND have sufficient profit to require filing a return, AND fail to file the required returns for state and federal.
The main one being I pay 4000 a year in taxes to send your to school and then spend another $8000 a year each to send of my 4 kids to a better school than the you get for "free".
If you're spending that much to send them to a "better" school, the least they could do in return is proofread your posts for you.
Take the pictures down; repost them all the day that the diploma is received.
Slashdot isn't about anything except marketing to teenager children any more. This fights right in to their sense of self righteousness.
Yea because when I think "young and hip" slashdot is the first thing that pops into my mind.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Nice try Coward, but both copyright law AND the school's own policy disagree with you. This is even in TFA itself: "Title 17 of the United States Copyright Law, which denotes that the “Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work”; in the case of photography, the individual who presses the shutter is the ‘author’. In addition, the District’s Board Policy Manual explicitly states “a student shall retain all rights to work created as part of the instruction or using District technology resources.”"
I hope you don't have a job that depends on you giving them advice like this, because if you do your company is probably violating the law all the time based on your "idea" of how the law works, as opposed to reality.
I hope you never have a job that asks you for your opinion on this type of issue, since you couldn't be more wrong. It's even in the article...
Title 17 of the United States Copyright Law, which denotes that the “Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work”; in the case of photography, the individual who presses the shutter is the ‘author’.
In addition, the District’s Board Policy Manual explicitly states “a student shall retain all rights to work created as part of the instruction or using District technology resources.”
Even if he is selling the photos, I believe copyright says they belong to the photographer.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
they couldn't possibly hope to recover the $100k+ in legal fees.
$100,000? That's just a tiny bit inflated. My legal fees for two felonies were slightly more than $5,000. It's not going to cost six digits to get judicial relief in a circumstance like this. It probably doesn't even get the lawsuit stage, a demand letter sent to the school district and reviewed by their attorney would probably suffice. "Yeah, we're going to lose this one. Wipe the student's record clean, tell him you're sorry, and move on."
There's plenty of stupidity in the American legal system to make fun of without making stuff up.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I work for a school district in the technology department. We clearly spell out in our usage agreements that everything created on district equipment is for educational purposes only, and not to be sold for profit by either students or staff. Since this guy is using a school camera, I think this might be the policy he's running into.
From his Flickr site: "At the end of the [Texas Association of Journalism Educators] class, I approached the teacher confused, and asked that because I was using a school camera, and using a school press pass, do I still own my pictures? She replied that I did."
If he were using his own equipment on his own time, I'd be first in line to tell the school to blow it out his ear. But if he's covering these sporting events as a member of the yearbook staff for the school and he's turning around and selling yearbook pictures privately for his own profit, then no, I don't think he should do that.
This would require a separate agreement that he (and his parents, since he is a minor and therefore cannot enter into a binding contract) would have had to agree to. He's not an employee of the school (and even then would have to sign an intellectual property agreement first), so the press pass means squat. School board policy even states that students retain ownership of their creative works. As for the camera ownership doesn't matter by itself in the eyes of copyright law (see the monkey selfie fiasco).
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I work for a school district in the technology department. We clearly spell out in our usage agreements that everything created on district equipment is for educational purposes only, and not to be sold for profit by either students or staff. Since this guy is using a school camera, I think this might be the policy he's running into.
Perhaps, if it was written down and his parents signed it or there was some valid way for all parties to agree with the rule.
From his Flickr site: "At the end of the [Texas Association of Journalism Educators] class, I approached the teacher confused, and asked that because I was using a school camera, and using a school press pass, do I still own my pictures? She replied that I did."
If he were using his own equipment on his own time, I'd be first in line to tell the school to blow it out his ear. But if he's covering these sporting events as a member of the yearbook staff for the school and he's turning around and selling yearbook pictures privately for his own profit, then no, I don't think he should do that.
Being on the yearbook staff does not preclude him from doing things on his own. It isn't a contractually bound obligation. Unless the press pass bound him contractually (which would be odd for a high school), it's just and ID to let you into places where the public is restricted.
In any event, the principal (at least according to TFA) is being an ass. Instead of sitting him down and discussing this rather complex real world issue, he / she (?) threatens with blackmail and suspensions. Not exactly role model material here.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
He is a taking a yearbook class, using the schools equipment, and at the end of the year the book will be sold to the students. If the school did it correctly his parents would have signed a consent form giving the school the rights to the work for publication in the yearbook. The question is did they give the school ownership of the copyright like work for hire, exclusive publication rights for a time period, or just nonexclusive rights to publish the work?
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.
He is a taking a yearbook class, using the schools equipment, and at the end of the year the book will be sold to the students. If the school did it correctly his parents would have signed a consent form giving the school the rights to the work for publication in the yearbook. The question is did they give the school ownership of the copyright like work for hire, exclusive publication rights for a time period, or just nonexclusive rights to publish the work?
From the article:
In addition, the District’s Board Policy Manual explicitly states “a student shall retain all rights to work created as part of the instruction or using District technology resources.”
"... isn't this completely unrelated to what slashdot is about?"
Please don't post comments to stories that don't interest you.
The sociology of technology is something I must deal with every day. It's interesting to me to read stories about that.
That’s why many schools now do the “In-School Suspension”. Sit in the principals’ office and work all day on the mounds of homework the teachers send down. Not quite as much fun as the vacation format.
whose job involves weeding out students who will be more trouble than they're worth.
Students who understand and exercise their civil rights are not "more trouble than they are worth" if the student is pursuing a career in law or journalism.
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!
they couldn't possibly hope to recover the $100k+ in legal fees.
$100,000? That's just a tiny bit inflated. My legal fees for two felonies were slightly more than $5,000. It's not going to cost six digits to get judicial relief in a circumstance like this. It probably doesn't even get the lawsuit stage, a demand letter sent to the school district and reviewed by their attorney would probably suffice. "Yeah, we're going to lose this one. Wipe the student's record clean, tell him you're sorry, and move on."
There's plenty of stupidity in the American legal system to make fun of without making stuff up.
Were they felonies where you confessed guilt or that were fairly routine? 100K might be a bit inflated, but not necessarily if you were to go all the way to trial... you have civil discovery costs on both sides and over 4000 photos, plus electronics experts on posting, plus the cost of motion practice, plus trial time, plus appeals. It really depends who you get to do the case, but it could certainly go to $30K pretty easily, and $100K under certain circumstances.
That being said, it's likely 5K before settlement.