{"id":1561,"date":"2009-09-25T00:05:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T04:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2009-09-25T00:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T04:05:00","slug":"ip-infringement-alert-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2009\/09\/25\/ip-infringement-alert-1\/","title":{"rendered":"IP Infringement Alert #1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Social Scene, MOCA (2000)<\/p><\/div>\n

This past week, I discovered that a complete essay of mine, “Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand at Century’s End,”\u00a0had become available online at Doug Rickard’s blog, AmericanSuburbX: Photography & Culture<\/a>. Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, this 3600-word essay had appeared originally in the catalogue of that institution’s exhibition The Social Scene: The Ralph R. Parsons Foundation Photography Collection<\/a><\/em>, published in 2000. (For a description of this survey show, click here<\/a>.) Copyright to this essay, and all subsidiary rights related thereto, belong to me.<\/p>\n

Since the “fair use” exception to the copyright law does not permit unauthorized publication of an entire essay under any circumstances, I sent Mr. Rickard a query:<\/p>\n

What’s the basis for your publication of my copyrighted essay, “Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand at Century’s End” at your blog?<\/em><\/p>\n

He replied as follows:<\/p>\n

Hi A.D.,<\/em><\/p>\n

I thought that it needed to be seen rather than buried somewhere in an archive.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let me know if you would prefer for me to delete it and I will do so or I can add any desired links if that is preferrable.<\/em><\/p>\n

I responded thus:<\/p>\n

I might well agree with you when you write that “I thought that it needed to be seen rather than buried somewhere in an archive.” The appropriate way to deal with that perception is to contact the copyright holder of the work and propose to put it online. To which the copyright holder may or may not agree. Republishing it without permission is presumptuous, to say the least.<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s also the only legal way to publish it. What you’ve done is clear violation of copyright \u2014\u00a0and I suspect that much if not all of the content of your blog, images no less than text, appears there illegally. This reflects a bizarre sense of entitlement to which I don’t want to contribute in any way. So take my essay down immediately.<\/em><\/p>\n

What will happen to you and the blog is that you’ll run into someone not nearly as generous as me, who will hit you with a suit under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a><\/em>, which makes you vulnerable to fines of $250K per infraction. They’ll shut you down, and do you real financial harm, whereas I’ll just retrieve my essay and caution you to respect the legal IP rights of my colleagues in the field by securing permissions before you put anyone’s materials online.<\/em><\/p>\n

And Mr. Rickard replied:<\/p>\n

Allan, \u00a0I sincerely appreciate your concerns and will delete your piece ASAP. <\/em><\/p>\n

In term of the content, it is both joint driven by Author\/Photographer and the site and also republishing with links to content authors included – also to Amazon, etc. A large portion of the authors and photographers are working with me directly (Robert Hirsch, Shelby Adams, Tanyth Berkeley, Gil Blank, Danny Lyon, Roswell Angier, Todd Hido, JH Engstrom, Hally Pancer, Pieter Hugo, etc) and many are not. The site at its core is a resource for the entire photographic community and also and an educational vehicle so I have approached it as such and consequently have been more liberal then if a commercial venture – that would of course necessitate a different and financially driven arrangement. I view this site and it’s contribution as a win-win for most of the photographers and content authors and clearly for the photographic community as a whole. Honestly, all but a few individuals have seen it that way. I think that the foundational contributors (“founding fathers”) to photography as a medium need to be bridged to the current crop of contemporary artists and that a narrative both visually and content-wise needs to occur. The site and it’s structure are well suited to provide such a bridge albeit, a subjective one and with a sharp eye toward editing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hope all is well.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Mr. Rickard did indeed delete my text rapidly from his site. So my own complaint is resolved. However, I remain troubled by the “bizarre sense of entitlement” that allows this web publisher to assume that his sense of the importance of making something available to others overrides his legal obligation to respect the laws governing intellectual property. This troubles me especially because it’s self-serving, protestations of creating “a resource for the entire photographic community and also an educational vehicle”\u00a0notwithstanding. Mr. Rickard is inarguably drawing traffic to his blog by posting pirated content there. He’s also using the reputations of these unwitting contributors as a tacit endorsement of his blog, since the reasonable inference of any visitor there is that these writers’ and photographers’ works appear at this blog with their makers’ approval. In short, Mr. Rickard derives personal and professional benefit \u2014 in the form of web traffic and credibility \u2014\u00a0from his unauthorized use of content created by and belonging to others.<\/p>\n

So I’m concerned for those of my colleagues whose copyrighted works also appear illegally at this blog because they’re among the “many [authors who] are not . . . working with me directly.” Blather about “the foundational contributors (‘founding fathers’) to photography as a medium” aside, I don’t find it an honor to have someone heist my IP \u2014 and most of my colleagues feel the same. Generally speaking, we prefer to receive formal written requests for such usages, and to make our own decisions regarding where and when to put it online. That’s a basic professional courtesy in the publishing world, to which Mr. Rickard appears oblivious.<\/p>\n

\n

Let me be blunt about this: Copyright violation and other infringement of IP rights is never \u2014\u00a0I repeat, never \u2014\u00a0“a win-win for \u00a0. . . photographers and content authors and clearly for the photographic community as a whole.” It’s theft: rude, arrogant, selfish, and unjustifiable. It sets a bad precedent generally; moreover, in the case of a given individual, not pursuing such infringement can void protection of one’s copyright at a later date.<\/p>\n

As a freelance creator of intellectual property I oppose violation of my own copyright and that of others when it’s committed by someone running a commercial emterprise whose motives are clearly venal, as in the case of the Paul Kopeikin Gallery<\/a>. I oppose it no less when the perpetrator claims altruistic motives, marveling as always at the selflessness with which such noble souls sacrifice others for their cause.<\/p>\n

So I consider Mr. Rickard a thief, just as I consider Paul Kopeikin a thief. Both stole my work. I don’t see any difference between them, despite the fact that Mr. Rickard appears to mean well in terms of the overall purpose of his blog.<\/p>\n

I forced Kopeikin to remove from his website dozens of essays (all of them pirated) by some three dozen other authors. I hope Mr. Rickard has the decency to strip out all content from his site not specifically licensed to him by the copyright holders. I hope my colleagues from whom he’s boosted content, writers and photographers alike, demand that their work gets removed from his blog. And I hope the photography community lets this publisher know, in no uncertain terms, that they disapprove of this “service” provided by him at the expense of others. To send Mr. Rickard your opinion, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t find it an honor to have someone heist my IP \u2014 and most of my colleagues feel the same. Generally speaking, we prefer to receive formal written requests for such usages, and to make our own decisions regarding where and when to put it online. That’s a basic professional courtesy in the publishing world, to which Mr. Rickard appears oblivious. Let me be blunt about this: Copyright violation and other infringement of IP rights is never — I repeat, never — “a win-win for . . . photographers and content authors and clearly for the photographic community as a whole.” It’s theft: rude, arrogant, selfish, and unjustifiable. It sets a bad precedent generally; moreover, in the case of a given individual, not pursuing such infringement can void protection of one’s copyright at a later date. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[35,125,167,187,238,395],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property-2","tag-americansuburbx","tag-copyright-law","tag-doug-rickard","tag-fair-use","tag-intellectual-property","tag-paul-kopeikin","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}