![]() Like Gordon, it's quite possible that someone could take a photo and not realize its inherent value right away, she said. Carolyn Wright, who operates, says a few moments of "What if that happened to me?" reflection now can save a lot of heartache later. Even if their legal rights remain, it's often incredibly hard to shove the cat back in the bag after a photo has been tweeted to the world and passed around. Professionals are well-schooled in controlling the distribution of images, but amateurs often aren't. The legal questions begin immediately upon taking the photo. "You have to police them, because they won't do it themselves." “There's definitely an ethics issue here," Krum said. When that happens, it's up to the rights holder - the photographer - to file a copyright claim and demand payment. But there were plenty of other outlets that used her photo - and Krum's before it - without obtaining permission. ( also paid Gordon for the right to use her photo on the website and on television.) Many other outlets asked for her permission to republish, which she granted without charging a fee. The Associated Press paid for a license to use Gordon's photo, and to send it to all its members. "And they are surprised when someone says, 'You've taken this, it's mine." That things belong to us, not to a person," she said. "The culture of the Internet is this concept of sharing everything. Misuse of content isn't new, she points out - famous photos have been copied without credit for 150 years - but the Internet has made it easy and, in some circles, normal. ![]() "Unless (you) post the photo with a message that says, 'please copy this and pass it along,' the photographer holds the copyright," said Luria, a partner in Davis & Gilbert in New York. The Stefanie Gordon iPhone photo that started it all. Sharing it on a social media site does nothing to limit or reduce that fundamental right, according to digital rights expert Mary Luria. The mere act of taking a photograph means the photographer holds the copyright for that picture. Gordon and Krum’s stories show that reality is far more complicated. On the other hand, commercial outlets that sell a product using images and videos should feel compelled to pay for content they use. It's second nature for people who use social networks to copy and paste photographs or other media, and there's probably no changing that. One face of Internet culture dating back to the advent of Napster holds that everything electronic should be free, and there's no harm in copying digital content. “Organizations say, ‘Well, it’s a regular person we don't even have to compensate them.’ They do things they wouldn’t do with a professional photographer," Krum said. “It's still the wild, wild West right now.” In some ways, it seems more socially acceptable to take advantage of a naïve rights holder. "It's kind of crazy that after two years there is still nothing in place to deal with this issue,” Krum said. The confusion surrounding Gordon's photo felt very familiar to him. ![]() He earned virtually nothing from his famous photo, which was copied and used by both commercial and private publications around the world. He took exactly one picture with his iPhone, instantly tweeted it from the ferry he was on a few feet from the plane, and went to help passengers off the floating aircraft. He landed, quite literally, in the middle of the digital rights debate in 2009, when a passenger aircraft made an unexpected landing in the Hudson River. The last victim - or recipient, depending on your point of view - of Internet fame borne of an accidentally famous photograph was Janis Krum. Still, she is the latest in a long line of characters made larger-than-life by the Internet's virus-like network effects. (See the original photoblog post of Gordon's photo.) It also landed her smack in the middle of an ethical and legal debate that may be as important as the future of the Internet itself. Gordon's now-famous photo of the space shuttle Endeavour soaring through the clouds got her an overwhelming amount of attention - her 15 minutes of fame, Internet style. Still miffed after a late-night Yankees loss to the Red Sox, she took a photo out the window of her airplane seat with an iPhone, tweeted it to friends when she landed, then headed off to spend the day with her father.īy the time she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, her iPhone was practically buzzing out of her lap, teeming with messages of congratulation and requests for interviews. Short on sleep and worried about the recent loss of her job, Stefanie Gordon boarded a Delta flight from New York to Palm Beach at 6:30 a.m. Stefanie Gordon displays the image she shot from an airplane of Space Shuttle Endeavour's final launch on Monday in New York City.
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