How scientists are using facial-recognition AI to track humpback whales; NPR, February 29, 2024

 Lauren Sommer, NPR; How scientists are using facial-recognition AI to track humpback whales

"Photographs are key for counting whales. As they dive deep, humpbacks raise their tails out of the water, revealing markings and patterns unique to each individual. Scientists typically identify whales photo by photo, matching the tails in a painstaking process.

Cheeseman figured that technology could do that more quickly. He started Happy Whale, which uses artificial intelligence-powered image recognition to identify whales. The project pulled together about 200,000 photos of humpback whales. Many came from scientists who had built large image catalogs over the years. Others came from whale watching groups and citizen scientists, since the website is designed to share the identity of a whale and where it's been seen."

Photographer Sues Church Over Copyright Infringement; Fstoppers, December 28, 2023

  Alex Cooke, Fstoppers; Photographer Sues Church Over Copyright Infringement

"A photographer is taking legal action against a small church in South Carolina for allegedly using his photograph without consent.

Erin Paul Donovan, a photographer from New Hampshire, has initiated a federal lawsuit against Wightman United Methodist Church in Prosperity, South Carolina. Donovan claims that his photograph, depicting New Hampshire’s White Mountains, was used on the church's website without his permission, specifically as a thumbnail for a sermon video dated June 2021...

The suit further alleges that the church not only used the image without authorization but also removed Donovan's copyright notice, name, and watermark from the photograph as it originally appeared on his website."

Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging reproduction fees—at last; The Art Newspaper, December 29, 2023

 Bendor Grosvenor , The Art Newspaper; Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging reproduction fees—at last

"A recent judgement on copyright in the Court of Appeal (20 November) heralds the end of UK museums charging fees to reproduce historic artworks. In fact, it suggests museums have been mis-selling “image licences” for over a decade. For those of us who have been campaigning on the issue for years, it is the news we’ve been waiting for.

The judgement is important because it confirms that museums do not have valid copyright in photographs of (two-dimensional) works which are themselves out of copyright. It means these photographs are in the public domain, and free to use.

Museums use copyright to restrict the circulation of images, obliging people to buy expensive licences. Any thought of scholars sharing images, or using those available on museum websites, was claimed to be a breach of copyright. Not surprisingly, most people paid up. Copyright is the glue that holds the image fee ecosystem in place.

What has now changed? Museums used to rely on the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which placed a low threshold on how copyright was acquired; essentially, if some degree of “skill and labour” was involved in taking a photograph of a painting, then that photograph enjoyed copyright. But subsequent case law has raised the bar, as the new Appeal Court judgement makes clear."

Some of Trump’s New NFTs Look Like Photoshops of Google Search Results; PetaPixel, December 16, 2022

 JARON SCHNEIDER, PetaPixel; Some of Trump’s New NFTs Look Like Photoshops of Google Search Results

"After hyping a major announcement, Donald Trump revealed his next major project: NFTs. But reverse image searches of some of the “digital trading cards” revealed them to be edits of clothing easily found in Google search, raising copyright questions...

While these images aren’t what most would consider to be the height of photographic art, they are still photos that are presumably owned by a manufacturer and using images — even e-commerce photos — without permission in this manner brings up copyright questions: it may not be legal, not to mention unethical, to just take photos off web stores, turn them into “art,” and then sell them for $99 each.

Gizmodo says it reached out to the manufacturer of both pieces of clothing to ask if either granted the former U.S. President permission to use their images, but neither immediately responded." 

Ethics of news photos in a digital world; Northern Wyoming News, November 18, 2021

KARLA POMERO, Northern Wyoming News; Ethics of news photos in a digital world

"Ethically, for a news photo there is not much you can or should manipulate. We take out some of the yellow when shooting photos in certain locations due to the overhead lighting.

If using a flash and the lighting is wrong and I get people with red eyes I will use the tool to remove the red eyes because I know those people did not have red eyes at the time I took the photo.

That’s the key in news photography. The news photo must tell the story of what was happening at that exact moment, where it was taken at that moment. You must not alter the story and altering the photo alters that story.

If you photoshop out things in the background of a photo because they may be distracting – that’s altering history, the history of that photo.

One of the students said they will combine photos to get the exact composite they want. You can do that for art. You can not do that when telling news through photos."

How to find copyright-free images (and avoiding a stock photo subscription); TNW, April 29, 2020

MIX , TNW; How to find copyright-free images (and avoiding a stock photo subscription)

"If you search for any term and head to the Images section in Google, you’ll instantly find thousands of images. There’s one issue, though: Some of them might be copyrighted and you might be putting yourself (or your employer) at risk. Fortunately, you can filter images by usage rights, which will help you avoid that...

Here are a couple of our favorite free stock photo sites:

• Unsplash
• Pixabay
• Pexels
• StockSnap
• Burst

If you’re looking for copyright-free PNG cutouts, you should check out PNGPlay, Icon8, and PNGimg.

Even though a lot of these images are free to use without any attribution, you can support the creators by giving them credit, which in turn gives their work more exposure. You might not have the resources to purchase their images, but someone else might be interested in hiring them. Crediting them for their work helps with that.

You get to save some money by avoiding buying a Shutterstock subscription, they get free exposure. It’s a win-win."

SpaceX Just Retroactively Put Copyright Restrictions on Its Photos; Motherboard, December 11, 2019

Karl Bode, Motherboard;

SpaceX Just Retroactively Put Copyright Restrictions on Its Photos

"As SpaceX began supplanting NASA in humanity’s quest to explore outer space, Motherboard pondered in 2015 what would happen to the public’s unfettered access to space imagery data (images taken by NASA are in the public domain and can be used by anyone for almost any purpose.) Thankfully, SpaceX soon after made the important decision to offer mission images under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License, allowing them to be freely shared and even remixed by anyone. This is the least-restrictive Creative Commons license in existence and allows anyone to use the photos for almost anything (you could, for example, make and sell a photo book or calendar of SpaceX images if you wanted to.)

But a little noticed change to the SpaceX Flickr account this week stripped away the CC0 license affixed to the company’s images, replacing it with an “Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic” license. That, in turn, imposed notable and potentially confusing restrictions on how those images can be shared and re-used."

Big new copyright fair use decision involving part owner of Miami Heat; Washington Post, 9/17/15

Eugene Volokh, Washington Post; Big new copyright fair use decision involving part owner of Miami Heat:

"I blogged about this case back when the magistrate judge issued his report, but today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed (Katz v. Chevaldina), and concluded that defendant Irina Chevaldina’s use of the photo shown above is a fair use. The twist: The subject of the photo, Raanan Katz, bought the photo after it was published and used by Chevaldina, and then sued her in his capacity as now-owner of the photograph. No dice, said the court, concluding — in my view correctly — that Chevaldina’s use was a “fair use” and thus not an infringement..."