Here's an interesting item related to photos on the Internet and copyright law. To quote from a PRNewswire story: "Teenaged photographer Lara Jade Coton never expected one of her photos to turn up on the cover of a pornographic movie. She certainly never expected to see a picture of herself on such a movie. But that is exactly what Lara Jade found when she discovered that an innocent self-portrait, taken when she was only 14 years old, was obtained off the Internet and used without permission as the DVD cover and face art for [a] sexually explicit movie."
Lara Jade, who is now 18 years old, said she was "absolutely horrified" when she found out what the movie company had done. And she filed a lawsuit in Tampa, Fla., claiming copyright infringement, as well as a number of other charges, and is pursuing punitive damages as well.
Lara Jade Coton
As the PRNewswire story points out quite appropriately, "The case demonstrates a dilemma facing artists today and reveals yet another danger of the Internet for teens and children. While the Internet offers creative people a worldwide outlet for their work, it's also common for artists to find that their work has been borrowed innocently or just plain stolen by others."
Exactly right. You bloggers and others out there who think that anything on the Web is free for your use, take note. The instant someone creates a photograph, that image is copyrighted and cannot be reused without the copyright owner's permission.
Lara's photography looks quite promising. You can see her images at http://www.larajade.com. And if you like her photography, she even has an area on her Web site where you can legitimately purchase prints of her photos as well as an area where you can request to license her images for other uses.
- Gary
1 comment:
I hope that she gets what she wants and doesn't let this stop
her photography.
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