:: Copyright For Creatives ::

I just watched a couple of videos from PhotoshopUserTV on copyright, courtesy of Scott Kelby. They have an IP attorney on the phone for a few quick questions about copyright, and the answers are worthwhile. Because they’re worthwhile, I’m posting a summary. I guess they want to drive people to watch the videos, and you should, but this will help me remember.

• The biggest one, to me, is this: in order to get into court to sue someone for the unlicensed use of your photographs (or other creative works, presumably), you have to register your materials explicitly. James Duncan Davidson has talked about this in the past, but something I didn’t catch previously is that you have 90 days from the publication date of the infringing material to register your work. If you do it within 90 days, it’s as if you had registered right after creating the image/novel/piece of music. You can still register after 90 days, but if you do it within the 90 day window, you’re entitled to more than just the value of the license. It doesn’t matter when your photos were taken or your novel was written, as long as you get your registration taken care of within 90 days, you have strong legal backing.
• Your work is still copyrighted even without explicit federal registration, of course, but if you (god forbid) feel the need to go to court over it, you must have registered your work in order to get into the court room. And that court room will be federal court — copyright cases are always federal cases. No, you can’t go to small claims court. If you don’t go to federal court, or you don’t have your registration, a court will still cash your check (as Edward Greenberg says), but nothing will happen.
• Issues of what and whom can be photographed, and from where, are issues of state and local law that vary quite a bit. So if you want to know what you can do in your area, check your state code or ask a local attorney. Generally, you can shoot publicly visible buildings (public or private) and events if they are visible from public rights of way, and you can take photos of people in public spaces without their permission. You can even sell limited-edition prints (say, of a few thousand or less) of those images, in most states, without a model release.
• If you’re using an image for promotional or commercial purposes (it doesn’t matter if you’re a non-profit), and a person is a clearly visible in that photo, you probably need a model release from that person. For editorial, journalistic, or educational purposes, you don’t need a release.

I think I have all that straight. Anyway, it’s interesting and useful to know, both from the perspective of someone who makes stuff, and as someone who uses stuff.

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:: Happy July, Have Some Spam ::

My site is getting slammed by spammers right now for some reason, and Movable Type’s spam filters are just not doing the trick. Along with countless hundreds of spam comments that get automatically junked every hour, dozens have been getting through, at least for moderation if not actually getting published. It’s really irritating, and Movable Type’s templates have changed so much since they started that there’s no easy way to just flick a switch to add a CAPTCHA challenge. So… for now, I’m turning off comments.

I’m going to have to spend some nerd time figuring out if I want to stick with Movable Type. I use it on a few sites here, but this is the only place I use it. Maybe starting afresh with some new templates, I can get it working nicely and avoid the unpleasant task of weeding out spam. We shall see.

Meantime, the weather has been beautiful, and I have no complaints of consequence. I just want to figure out how I’m getting back to NH this fall for my cousin’s wedding.

UPDATE — Comments are turned on again. I messed around with Movable Type, installed a plugin that I hope will help. We’ll see how it goes.

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:: Skywriting ::

Walking the dog today, I saw skywriting for the first time in quite a while. Unfortunately for the pilot’s client, the message was too long for anyone (or at least, me) to read by the time it was finished. A bit of Googling turned up this article from the Trib that explains who is responsible.

It also mentions what the skywriting actually spells.

Apparently she wrote this over Wrigley some time this past weekend while a ballgame was in progress. I didn’t see that on Sunday when I was there, although I did hear the ridiculously loud firecrackers someone was setting off outside that scared the bejeezus out of everyone.

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:: Amazon Offers Older Bill Stewart CDs - A Warning ::

A few weeks ago I looked again for the Bill Stewart records that are out of print (mentioned previously). Lo and behold, Telepathy and Think Before You Think are available from Amazon. I ordered both right away, and received them today. These CDs were not available anywhere, as far as I knew, so this was a very happy discovery.

I wasn’t as happy when I opened Telepathy, though. The print quality of the artwork is substandard, kind of blurry. The CD itself is a burned CD-R — the print quality on the disc itself was also not great. For the moment, I’m giving Amazon the benefit of the doubt that the most important part, the music content itself, is untarnished. Listening on my computer speakers, I can’t tell, and without an original to compare to, it’s hard to say, but I’ll be giving this a careful listen on a better system to find out.

Looking closely at the bar code, I saw “Manufactured by Amazon.com kydc Lexington, KY”, which was interesting. Giving the page a second look as I was writing to them, I noticed that halfway down the substantial page, under Editorial Reviews of all places, they include this note:

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media, when sold by Amazon.com. Amazon.com’s standard return policy will apply.

This is not noted at the top of the page with the summary info, nor under Product Details, both of which would be sensible places. I’m not so cynical that I think they’re hiding this information to try to trick people, but I also don’t think they’re being as up front about this as they should.

I paid the price of a full CD, and I expected to get the real deal. I’ve emailed Amazon about this to find out what the story is, because there was nothing in the product description warning me that I was buying this cheap stuff. If Amazon writes back to me, I’ll update this post.

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:: England Travelogue Posted ::

We went to England last month, had a great time, took a lot of pictures. We have also just finished the travelogue. If you’re interested, have a look.

I’m looking forward to voting for Obama in November. And you?

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