Not a Pretty Picture
By Robert MacMillan, June 17, 2005
[ Is Wal-Mart placing photo-copy counter clerks in censorship roles? ]
washingtonpost.com
Imagine needing a legal document to get your photos printed ... because they're too good.
It happened to Kacie Powell, a photographer for Centre College in Danville, Ky. Powell told the Associated Press that she tried to get some digital shots printed at Wal-Mart, but employees said they looked "too professional." She ended up signing an affidavit that included pictures of college employees who were authorized to print her pictures.
When a colleague whose portrait was included among the authorized photographers went to Wal-Mart with some candids from graduation, she got turned down too. Powell had to reaffirm that neither of them was a picture pirate.
The reason, the AP reported, was that Wal-Mart employees have been instructed to refuse to print photos that they suspect could be pirated, stolen or otherwise copied. The best way to tell? They look too good to have been taken by the customer. Here's the crux, taken from the AP's story: "Copyright law requires photo labs to be on the lookout for portraits and other professional work that should not be duplicated without a photographer's permission. In the old days, questions about an image's provenance could be settled with a negative. If you had it, you probably had the right to reproduce it. Now, when images are submitted on CDs or memory cards or over the Web, photofinishers often have to guess whether a picture was truly taken by the customer -- or whether it was scanned into a computer or pilfered off the Internet. That leads to some awkward moments at photo desks when customers' images get barred for essentially looking too good."
I wonder if this would happen to Annie Leibovitz if she showed up at the one-hour photo counter.
Bill Wolfson of Columbus, Ohio, said a picture that he wanted to use for his Christmas cards got the heave-ho after a Walgreen's photo supervisor asked how she could know that he hadn't forged his name on the processing order. The store eventually printed the photos, but Wolfson said he thinks the situation will get worse.
I suspect that he is correct. The Internet and a suite of fantastic editing tools let us take everything from the white album to photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda and mix them up the way we want them. You could argue that such remixes constitute art, but they do violate the rights of the people who made them.
It's part of the same trend that drove the recording industry batty with illegal downloads through file-sharing networks, and is bathing Hollywood in a cold sweat. Now, as Wal-Mart spokeswoman Jacquie Young put it, it's leading Wal-Mart, Walgreen's and others to "err on the side of protecting copyrights."
The photo labs aren't necessarily concerned with protecting Diane Arbus's estate or upholding Paul Allen's investment in Corbis. They're more interested in a good old CYA strategy, the AP said: "Professional photographers have successfully sued photofinishers for allegedly being lax about enforcing copyrights. Steve Noble, who oversees regulatory affairs at the Photo Marketers Association, believes the situation will remain hazy unless copyright laws that were written in a different technological era are altered to reflect the possibilities of digital dissemination. Or, he said, for practical purposes photographers should consider charging more up front for their work and then signing away future copyright."
That's too bad for the photo labs, which already face a tough time as people discover the allure of do-it-yourself photo scanning, manipulation and printing. Every sale of this easy-to-use equipment -- and as an all-thumbs device user, I can say it really is easy -- takes another customer out of the lab. And as the allure of digital photography's instant gratification enchants more amateurs, the stores are going to wish they hadn't driven away the best of the bunch by doubting their work.
I don't know how to keep angry photographers from suing, but somehow they made do in the days before digital. Printers have manipulated photographs since the early days of the medium (just ask Leon Trotsky, if you can find him). It might be harder now, but if they want to keep their customers, they'll have to trust them.
On a personal note, I'm someone who likes to load up his Topcon the old-fashioned way, so they still have me on their side... as long as they don't take my Kodachrome away.
A Novel Defense of Child Pornography
It might not be such a crazy idea to deputize the nation's photo lab workers to protect copyrights. After all, they already serve as the front line in the war against child pornography.
That's yet another problem that the Internet poses. Law enforcement authorities have prosecuted many people suspected of creating, downloading and viewing child porn on their PCs, and child-porn rings have been busted around the world. Now, the Walker County Messenger of Lafayette, Ga., reports on one man's attempt to keep the charges from sticking:
"Lawyers for Edward Ray Barton say they'll ask a state appeals court to decide if a person should be punished for viewing pornographic photos of children online. Barton last week was sentenced in Walker County Superior Court to serve 20 years behind bars. According to testimony, he looked at such photos on the Internet."
His defense team, however, suggests that maybe he never "had" the photos. More from the Messenger: "Computers keep track of websites visited by a computer. This record of Internet activity, stored in the so-called 'Temporary Internet files' section on a hard drive, includes website addresses, as well as any images found on those websites." In other words, his lawyers argued, he never had control of the files. That means that even though his computer contained more than 156 images of child pornography, they were never really his.
The Messenger quoted Judge Kristina Connelly as saying it was a "very close issue" and that "someone in Atlanta [home of the Georgia Court of Appeals] will have to decide this."
I don't possess a law degree, so I won't predict how this one will turn out. If this guy beats his rap, however, then something really is wrong with this nation.
Lafayette's a busy place for a city of 6,774 people. Check out this police blotter from the headline "Online sex bust" until the bottom. Seems like they have a problem on their hands.
From the Legal Porn World
Fans of free porn Web sites might find their offerings narrowing a bit because of a new interpretation of federal regulations that would require them to verify the age of their "models."
Here's the story from Wired.com: "An adult industry trade association plans to head to court this week to fight new federal enforcement efforts that could catch thousands of online porn sites with their pants down. ... Since federal law 18 U.S.C. 2257 went into effect 15 years ago, everyone who produces porn has been required to prove that performers are over 18. (According to adult industry attorney J.D. Obenberger, the regulations were inspired by congressional outrage at a hard-core video performance by 15-year-old Traci Lords.) Now, the law is getting stricter. The new enforcement regulations would require webmasters that don't produce material to keep age records for every image that shows or implies sexual activity on their sites." Violators would face up to 10 years in prison.
Lawyers for the porn business will try to stop the interpretation from taking effect, but even if they lose, someone's bound to come out on top. See this quote from adult entertainment industry lawyer Eric Bernstein: "There are going to be a lot of people who go out of business, and a lot of people who fill the gap and go into business," Bernstein said. "You'll see fewer and fewer people buying content from others unless they literally get the records. You'll see new production and new content coming out of this." So I guess everyone owes Traci a big "Thank you."
Les Fleurs du Mal Are Blooming
Susan Orleans exposed the skullduggery of the orchid industry in her New Yorker article. Now Los Angeles Times reporter Tomas Alex Tizon tearing the roof off the competitive poetry business. Tizon's article "In Search of Poetic Justice " tells the story of Alan Cordle, a librarian at Portland (Ore.) Community College who published accusations of personal bias in the poetry awards circuit. The Web site did the trick, all right, but it appears to be ruining his marriage to poet Kathleen Halme in the process.
"Major poets, some with Pulitzer Prizes and MacArthur Fellowships on their resumes, call him an 'attack dog,' an 'assassin,' a 'hangman' and, worst, a 'brat with a major rage disorder.' His supporters regard him a whistle-blower, champion and crusader. All agree that, for good or bad, Cordle has shaken up the establishment. He did most of this from his sofa. For the last 13 months, when not shushing people at the library, he has been running his laptop-created website, Foetry, which purports to expose the corrupt world of poetry contests," Tizon wrote. "The website's motto became: 'Exposing fraudulent contests. Tracking the sycophants. Naming names.' ... It has been a tense spring at the Cordle-Halme household. ... 'Here's one from Queens,' says Cordle, reading from a stack of hate mail: 'Dear Ellin [sic]. Well, you're a little coward, aren't you? Your wife must be about done with you. That's too bad -- for you.'"
It's a long story, but a good one. Go check it out.
Raising the Bars in National Parks
Cell phone companies are setting up towers in national parks all over the country, but the National Park Service doesn't know where. That's according to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Here's a statement on its Web site: "When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the door to cell towers on federal lands, Congress directed federal agencies to make appropriate regulations for preventing unsightly proliferation of towers. To date, only one of the 397 units of the National Park System -- the Golden Gate National Recreation Area -- has adopted a cell tower plan."
Meanwhile, as the site claims in a photo accompanying the release, a 100-foot-tall cell phone tower now looms over Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. "Nowhere will true solitude be possible unless the Park Service can be induced to responsibly manage all of its assets, including peace and quiet," the group says.
Old Faithful is not exactly a place of calm and repose, but watch out, this group might have a point. (Thanks to Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute for bringing this item to my attention in his column earlier this week.) |
