One Man Troll Army Arrested For Supporting Terrorists: Where's The Line Between Trolling And Terrorism?
Daily Deal: eduCBA Tech Training Bundle

The Crazy Permission-Asking Media Scrum That Descends When Photographic News Happens On Twitter

Too Much Free Time

from the insanity-in-the-making dept

Mon, Sep 14th 2015 09:22am -

As you may have heard last week, a British Airways plane caught fire as it was taxiing on the runway preparing for takeoff. Thankfully, everyone on board escaped with just a few minors scratches and bruises. The plane wasn’t so lucky. However, there were lots of other people around on other flights witnessing the whole thing and — not surprisingly — many of them have Twitter accounts. And, as has become fairly standard when visual news breaks somewhere with people around, they started tweeting photos. Here’s David L. Somers at 4:16pm:

And here’s Bradley Hampton at 4:17pm:

And here’s Eric Hays at 4:20pm:

There were a bunch of others as well, but those were three of the earliest that got the most attention.

Now, some of us might marvel at this amazing world we now live in, where everyone can be a broadcast reporter should news suddenly happen around them. It’s kind of amazing. But, perhaps even more fascinating is the somewhat insane mainstream media scrum that immediately follows. All three of these guys were almost immediately bombarded with news producers from TV, newspaper and online media, all asking for permission to use their photos. This is just a sampling because if I posted them all, i think my hand would cramp up from cutting and pasting so many embed codes. Notice that a bunch of the requests come from the very same news organizations, many asking if they can use it on all platforms/affiliates and such:

What’s kind of amazing is that all three guys basically sat around after all this graciously giving permission to most of the requests over and over and over and over and over again. Some of the requests were more detailed. Some asked the tweeters to get in contact to sign something. The most forward one was the AP who actually sent a “social media release form” as an attached image to a tweet:

The Weather Channel wanted Eric to “verify” his permission:

A bunch of other people noticed the nutty scrum and had fun with it, including jokingly asking for permission to retweet, to share on other social networks, to describe on the radio, to draw the picture, to look at and (my favorite) to look at and then not have nightmares about flying.

So what to make of all this? On the one hand, it seems like a fairly strong graphical representation of permission culture these days. In nearly every one of these cases, the news organizations in question would likely have extremely strong fair use protections. And it doesn’t look like any of the three guys above were looking to profit from their photos. To some extent, having taken and posted the photo may have actually been more of a nuisance for them, since they all then had to spend time responding to all those requests. As filmmaker Nina Paley has discussed in the past, permission culture gets super annoying when everyone has to keep asking, and you just want them to be free to use it. But, of course, in an age where every news organization is afraid to get hit with a massive damages award in a copyright lawsuit, they’re all going to ask.

That system seems fairly broken. We have at least some solutions for this. Creative Commons can handle some of it, but Twitter has no way to officially designate a CC license on a photo you’ve posted. That would certainly help a lot. But, overall, the whole thing just seems silly. These photos are news — and they’re initially being posted on public social media for a reason — because those who took them wanted them to be shared and spread. It seems silly that we need such an insane level of permission gating that every news agency on the planet has to bother these guys to ask for permission.

Filed Under: , , , , , , , , , ,

64 CommentsLeave a Comment
If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “The Crazy Permission-Asking Media Scrum That Descends When Photographic News Happens On Twitter”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
64 Comments
DannyB (profile) says:

Re: TL;DR! You quote that mass of drivel and expect anyone to read it all?

CC is attempting copyright WITH TEETH. And it will work to whatever extent copyrigtht teeth.

Some people WANT others to take and use their content. And some of that content is valuable. (See Open Source. Red Hat is a billion dollar company built on open source written by others.)

CC is similar to open source. You can take it and use it — as long as you comply with the terms of the license. No need to ask permission. Just comply with the CC license terms.

It will work. It does work now. It will continue to work.

Anonymous Coward says:

Has the AP lost its mind? They had the balls to include a legal agreement that gives them unrestricted rights? Morons who sign such agreements when it concerns their own photographs is a moron for doing so.

Reading through this article, the only thing that pissed me off was that agreement that the AP sent.

For me, I would allow permission of anyone to use the photographs as long as they gave me credit for the photo. Any news organizations that had the balls to send an agreement like the AP did, I would not grant permission to.

DannyB (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

It is organizations like the AP that should INSIST on Creative Commons licensing.

The AP would not need to keep track of detailed rights, or the particular text of a permission grant from a particular photo owner. They would not need to ask for all rights.

The AP would simply record who the owner of the photo is, which CC license it is under, and that would serve as a short easy to understand indication of what rights they have. For exmaple, all the AP needs to do is give credit.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Wait a couple weeks...

I can sue them for copyright infringement (violating the terms of my license).

Well, maybe you can, but chances are that you lose on an infringment claim with this approach. You would probably only have a breach of contract claim.

This area of law gets slightly complicated, and has a number of finer points.

See, for example, Sun v Microsoft (9th Cir. 1999)

Generally, a “copyright owner who grants a nonexclusive license to use his copyrighted material waives his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement” and can sue only for breach of contract. If, however, a license is limited in scope and the licensee acts outside the scope, the licensor can bring an action for copyright infringement.

(Citations omitted.)

Note that case is merely a taste, and doesn’t cover all the factors that may come into play.

Whatever (profile) says:

This story seems mostly to be an example of the simple concept that much of the mainstream media out there is respectful enough to actually ask permission to use an image that they may not have the rights to otherwise. Their questions were not to retweet it, but to actually run it on another medium altogether.

It’s not a question of “permission society”, it’s about respect, something that is often sorely lacking in the current grab all you can and run society.

AJ says:

Re: Re:

“something that is often sorely lacking in the current grab all you can and run society.”

Agreed. Between the copyright maximalist’s grabbing up as much of the public domain as they can and locking it up for ridiculous amounts of time, to big media issuing blanket take down requests on content they don’t even own, the total lack of respect is startling…this is indeed a welcome change. Perhaps a bit over the top, but welcome.

jupiterkansas (profile) says:

Re: Re:

This has nothing to do with respect and everything to do with protection from lawsuits.

Nevermind that the tenants of fair use allow journalists to use newsworthy images without asking permission, because you only need permission if it’s infringing, and fair use is not infringing.

And nevermind that everyone that’s NOT a news organization will unhesitatingly retweet, share on facebook, email to friends, post on their blogs, upload to reddit, etc. any newsworthy or interesting photo they come across all without any show of disrespect.

Putting something online, esp. an open forum like Twitter, is basically giving it to the world.

John85851 (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

I agree that the AP getting permission is their way of avoiding future issues where a photographer gets a big head and decides to sue the media for using his picture.

However, like some other posters are saying, what protection does the photographer have when an AP’s automated takedown bot sends him a takedown notice for “stealing” an AP photo?

tqk (profile) says:

Re: Re:

It’s not a question of “permission society”, it’s about respect, something that is often sorely lacking in the current grab all you can and run society.

“Grab all you can and run society” vs. “everything has to be owned” and we’ll sue you to death to prove it? I guess you missed this line from the story?

But, of course, in an age where every news organization is afraid to get hit with a massive damages award in a copyright lawsuit, they’re all going to ask.

Posting tweets is the modern equivalent of speaking to a room full of people, but we’ve encumbered it now with threats of lawsuits and requests to use statements said in public which should be covered by fair use exceptions written in the law. How is this an improvement over a default of permissiveness? How the hell is civilization going to continue to work when we’re all gagged by default?

Sheogorath (profile) says:

Re: Re: Respect

Giving accurate credit to the source is showing respect.
That’s all that ought to be needed or expected. Once somebody posts something publicly, its… public.
Yeah? You gonna be saying that after somebody posts one of your ebooks or artworks online for people to download without payment, making sure to credit you as the original creator? (-_Q)

Anonymous Coward says:

To tell the truth, this is actually a non article, or something made up to seem like it actually is news.

How many news organizations have had to work with their lawyers because images or video’s they have run with caused them problems? That happened in Staten Island over the police killing of a suspect.

What do you expect? Even if that were not the case, what is wrong with a news organization asking if they can use the image. They probably do have the legal right to use it anyway, fair use or not. Politicians have the right to use certain parts of songs, but it is still a good idea to get permission.

Josh in CharlotteNC (profile) says:

Re: Re:

The problem isn’t that news organizations need to work with their lawyers – the problem is that lawyers are actually running the news organizations. Them and business types who care about nothing but profit. The actual journalists aren’t in charge.

If the news organizations would use and then defend their fair use rights instead of folding whenever it will cost them money, they wouldn’t need to worry so much about it the second or 300th time.

As far as politicians – that’s an entirely different scenario. When you’re a politician and advocating that someone vote for you, and using a song, you don’t ask because you need permission – you ask because artist doesn’t like you, they’re going to speak out and be given attention for someone else.

wayout says:

Re: Re: Re:

“If the news organizations would use and then defend their fair use rights instead of folding whenever it will cost them money, they wouldn’t need to worry so much about it the second or 300th time.”

Maybe if a few of them had not gotten caught in obvious infringement cases, they would not now need to do this.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/federal-court/storm-video-shooter-sues-the-cbc-cnn-for-copyright-infringement-20150818

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/15/us-socialmedia-copyright-ruling-idUSBRE90E11P20130115

http://onenationrising.com/onr-news/fox-news-sued-for-copyright-violation

and so on…

JMT says:

Re: Re:

“To tell the truth, this is actually a non article, or something made up to seem like it actually is news.”

Your opinion is not necessarily the truth.

“Even if that were not the case, what is wrong with a news organization asking if they can use the image.”

The sheer ridiculous volume of tweets shown above show one thing wrong with it. As explained in the article, this would’ve been a major PITA for the recipients. The tweets mostly sound friendly and chummy, like they’re doing you a solid by asking, but I’m sure these guys were pretty sick of the attention after a short while.

“They probably do have the legal right to use it anyway, fair use or not.”

you sound a little confused here. If it’s fair use then they have the legal right to use it. If it’s not, then they don’t.

“Politicians have the right to use certain parts of songs, but it is still a good idea to get permission.”

Music licensing is a completely different (if equally frustrating) topic not at all related to fair use.

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

One Man Troll Army Arrested For Supporting Terrorists: Where's The Line Between Trolling And Terrorism?
Daily Deal: eduCBA Tech Training Bundle
Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...