Facing lawsuit from AP

How does one “happen to capture” photos by linking stories? Are you using some template blog that is pulling them in? Is there no way to disable that?

 

No not at all. These are links in my portfolio of my work. Some of the news organizations ran AP photos with my stories. Hell, I actually worked for AP as a senior writer for a couple of years. It's not exactly a scam but it's damn a money grab that won't work on me. I know better.

 

My company holds annual training sessions with one of our corporate lawyers about this exact topic. Wrong usage of a single photo has cost companies thousands of dollars. A cottage industry has basically built up.

We no longer even embed tweets from accounts unless we have explicit permission to do so. Some of these policies are about getting out ahead of the next "violation" someone thinks of making a money grab over.

 

When I am looking at your site, do I see the AP photo attached to your story or do I have to click through the link to the other publisher's website to see the AP photo?

 

There is (or was) a stock photo company that basically existed to file infringement claims against people who took their photos without permission. Like that was their business model and they were doing pretty well from collecting on claims a few years back because they'd send demand letters for several thousand dollars and then offer to settle for under $500 and a lot of people would do it. Trying to remember the name of it because it's been about 6 years or so since I helped a client deal with them.

 

You mean if you have, say, a print copy of your 1A BCS title game and post the section front on your portfolio site and it has an AP photo that ran with the story, you can get sued for THAT? You're not posting a fresh copy of the photo, and you're not publishing for profit or even for any kind of money. Besides, your paper subscribed to AP at the time, so the photo was paid for then.

How does a photo of an old section front on your personal, semi-private resume/portfolio site break copyright law? If so, that's really nuts.

 

Unless you are directly hosting the photo on your site, there are no grounds to sue. Did you receive a letter, email? Who from?

 

Did you actually embed the photo images or are these like screen grabs/shots of the print product that include the art? Or links to the original pieces? Seems to me if the original story has liscense to use the photo online you’d be covered but maybe not

 

Worked at a weekly in Iowa back in the early- to mid-'90s. Another weekly from the next county over would often copy our pics from our county fair and run them in their paper using the "Photo courtesy of" routine. Our editor got pissed (some of the pics were hers) and got the publisher involved to put a stop to it.