Category: Photography

Jennifer Lawrence in a Nude of Her Choosing

I had to call attention to this article by Megan Garber, writing for The Atlantic about Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photo shoot for Vanity Fair.  The photo itself is brilliant as is Garber’s analysis of it. Lawrence’s calling the hacking of her private photos a “sex crime” is entirely reasonable. And I am reminded why I care about copyright, why it still matters in the digital age, and why those who say, “Forget it, you’re fighting against the future,” are at least lazily cynical and at most hopelessly corrupt.  Permission is the foundation of copyright, just as it is the foundation for respecting another person enough not to “share” photos of her that she did not choose to distribute.  Permission is fundamental to civilization, yet somehow, the principle has been given a bad rap, treated as some sort of elitist barrier we must cross if we are to be free to play with these gadgets.  And I have no qualms asserting that this idea of permissionlessness, which has been championed as a digital-age value does emanate from a sexist psyche.  Permission deserves more attention than it gets.  Permission is the difference between a regrettable one-night stand and a rape.

Lawrence is talking about ethics. She’s talking about law. She’s talking about, essentially, decency in the age of digital reproduction. And she’s also, of course, talking about the tensions that inevitably exist in a world mediated by images. The line between objectification and empowerment is a notoriously thin one, particularly for women. Is that short skirt—or that low-cut shirt, or that nude Snapchat—liberating, or something else? In an environment saturated by images and therefore expectations, where does control end, and victimhood begin? “She” versus “her,” subject versus object … images, whether sent or stolen, capture all of those things.

Read Megan Garber’s full article here.

Maybe Google Means “See No Evil”

Yesterday, Google chairman Eric Schmidt was interviewed on public radio and simulcast on Google Hangouts.  WAMU’s Diane Rhem threw softballs, slow and over the plate at Schmidt, providing a friendly platform for the chairman to evangelize the many ways Google makes the world a better place.  Coincidentally, I happened to be editing the following:

For those who don’t know, ChillingEffects.org is a database and website managed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  It is a presumptive watchdog over the presumptive misuse of DMCA takedown notices — the implication being that free expression is “chilled” whenever such an abuse takes place.  In principle, this might seem like a reasonable thing for the EFF to oversee; after all, we don’t want free speech to get chilly, even if there is diminishing hope that speech is necessarily getting anymore valuable in the digital age.  But it turns out that whenever, say, Google receives a DMCA takedown notice for a link to infringing material, every one of these complaints is sent to ChillingEffects so that users are, in principle anyway, able to read the details of the complaint from the notice sender.   So for example, if you were to search the term “Expendables III,” which was weeks ago leaked before its theatrical release, you would find among the search results a notice from Google that reads as follows:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

In many cases, the link to the complaint will not provide the user with much information, and it’s a bit of a mystery what most users might do with the information anyway.  After all, if you’re the creator of a file like a YouTube video that is taken down by a rights holder, you can have access to the information needed to rectify the fault, if indeed it was a false claim.  What’s truly obnoxious about this notice, and even the name ChillingEffects itself, is the not-very-subtle implication that DMCA takedowns are by default abusive and generally chill free expression. Ya see what they did there?  And by they, I mean Google, which funds ChillingEffects to no one’s surprise I’m sure.  Now, enter the Hollywood hacked photo scandal and a twist on that story that, as Eriq Gardner recently wrote for The Hollywood Reporter, “might reveal something about Google’s policies toward flagged copyrighted content.”

What Garder is referring to is the fact that former Kate Upton beau, Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, delivered via his attorneys takedown notices identifying 461 URLs that were hosting racy photos of him and Upton. Of those URLs, Google removed links to 51%, drawing a distinction, according to Gardner, between nude photos and racy-but-clothed photos, irrespective of the fact that all of the photos in question were indeed stolen and are being published without permission.  Never ones to lose an opportunity to be complete tossers about copyright, Google is supposedly relying on an untested legal theory that the copyright holder of a selfie can only be the button pusher at the time of the taking.  This seems hardly relevant with regard to the matter of just acting like decent human beings; if images are known to be stolen, and the subject(s) of those images request that your for-profit search business remove links to them, you ought to do it on principle alone.  But this is not the mindset of the web industry despite its many self-aggrandizing proclamations as the engineers of social change for good.

Google seems to be concerned with a much higher principle than invading the privacy of a baseball star, a supermodel, or frankly you or me, and that’s the principle of doing whatever the hell it wants without consequences.  I think Gardner is right and that Google would love nothing more than a court case to affirm its position that these photos, though acquired illegally, are not the intellectual property of Mr. Verlander and that he, therefore, has no right to request their removal under DMCA.  This could even prove to be technically accurate; the copyright owner of a photo is the individual who exercises sufficient creative control (not the button pusher), so these images could still be the intellectual property of Miss Upton if indeed they were hacked from her account.  But that doesn’t mean Google isn’t benefitting from traffic driven by a prurient interest in seeing photos that were stolen and believed to be secure by their owners.  And Gardner also raises a valid point about ChillingEffects when he writes, “Google has in effect provided a road map for any voyeur looking for sites that refuse to remove stolen photos.”

All of this falls within the scope of the broad agenda maintained and well-funded by the Internet industry to foster a policy of “anything goes.”  As long as we allow them to gloss over privacy invasions, infringements on intellectual property, and profiting from social harm in the name of free speech, we only end up harming free speech in the long run.

Photographer Learns the “Value” of Exposure

We all know the cliche, right?  Free distribution made possible by Internet technology gives the artist exposure that will lead to otherwise hidden rewards; and so restricting use through ownership is anathema to the opportunity provided by social media.  Bullshit.  A friend just shared what may be the perfect real-life anecdote that gives lie to the culture of permissionlessness.  Photographer Rachel Scroggins tells a story on her blog that so clearly demonstrates what happens in a society in which the creator of a work can disappear amid the frenzy of sharing.

In September of 2013, Scroggins explains that she took a photo of supermodel Karlie Kloss in the act of taking a selfie with her smart phone.  Scroggins showed the photo to Kloss, who proceeded to share the image on Instagam without permission or a photo credit.  I’m sure Kloss was not being deliberately unkind but was merely acting like a typical citizen in a time when the very idea of permission or credit has been culturally bred out of everyone’s consciousness.  This degradation in the social contract is commonplace, but examples like this one don’t come along too often.  Because when a supermodel shares a photo, it has a tendency to go kinda viral.

As Scroggins watched her unattributed image rack up about fourteen thousand views, she could only imagine the potential good it might have done her had Kloss simply understood how essential that credit is.  Karlie Kloss did eventually apologize, but the image subsequently began to appear uncredited on numerous mainstream fashion websites all over the world.  Thus, Scroggins proceeded to spend time and energy in that new, thankless and unpaid second job of the digital-age artist — chasing down infringers of her works.  In some cases, she received apologies and compensation from the publications; but in many cases, she’s received little more than brush-offs and some reluctant acquiensce to her takedown requests.  And she’s still chasing the photo around the web, “All because, as she says, “Karlie Kloss used my photograph and neglected to credit me properly.”

So, on behalf of all the artists like Rachel Scroggins, spending countless hours pursuing thousands or millions of casual, unattributed and permissionless uses through cyberspace, I have to say to y’all who claim the “exposure” is worth abdicating copyright, that you are so completely full of shit.  Because while you — and I’m looking at you Mike Masnick — extoll the virtues of free, mass distribution for artists and creators, you simultaneously pimp out messages into the heads of beautiful users everywhere that the individual who made that work they’re “sharing” simply doesn’t exist anymore.  Pity the same phenomenon has yet to fully manifest among those of you promoting lame ideas about copyright.