Who is selling your photos?

People who post photos on Flickr are finding them for sale elsewhere on the net. Can the thieves be stopped? Probably not, according to The Guardian.

"... Among the billions of images online, the chances that a photographer will be able to find any particular infringing copies are small."

For Bloggers, Legit News Photos For Free

PicApp, a San Francisco-based company is offering copyright news and stock photos from large photo banks like Getty Images and Corbis for free. The company is likely to announce availability of its public beta service later today. GigaOM reports.

"The photos are displayed in a flash media file and can be embedded on any web page, just like YouTube. PicApp makes money off contextual advertising it embeds in the photos, and in turn shares it with the photo agencies.

The new service is a sign of how tough things are in the stock photography business, where new and low cost competitors are emerging thick and fast, and challenging the old dogs like Getty Images."

Motorola Sued by Fujifilm Unit Over Phone Lens Patent

Motorola Inc., the biggest U.S. maker of mobile phones, was sued by a unit of Fujifilm Holdings Corp. over claims the company infringed patents for camera-phone lenses. [via Bloomberg]

Motorola is selling more than 20 mobile phone models, including its popular Razr 3, that use lenses protected by three patents awarded in 2004 and 2005, Fujifilm's Fujinon unit said in the lawsuit filed yesterday. Fujinon asked a judge to block Motorola's infringement and award unspecified damages.

"By its infringing conduct, Motorola has made unlawful gains and profits,'' Fujinon said in a complaint filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware." Motorola has thus caused Fujinon irreparable damage.''

Pirated Simpsons video filmed on mobile

A man from the western Sydney suburb of Prairiewood faces up to five years' imprisonment after he was charged with uploading a pirated copy of The Simpsons Movie on the internet. The Sydney Herald Mrning reports,

"Police alleged the man illegally filmed the movie via a mobile phone on July 26, the first day of release, and within hours had uploaded the footage onto the internet.

The man was arrested in a raid on his home yesterday and charged by Federal Police with copyright theft after information provided to the AFP by the movie's producer, 20th Century Fox in the US.

... The illegal footage was removed within two hours, but not before it was downloaded about 3000 times.

The file quickly spread to BitTorrent sites and other file sharing networks and within 72 hours had been downloaded by another 110,000 people."

Snap-happy Shanghai students skimp on book costs

Bookshop owners in Shanghai are snapping at an influx of camera-wielding pirates taking photos of pages to avoid paying for pricey books, local media reported on Monday. Reuters reports.

"Used to people reading in their stores for hours without buying a thing, Shanghai's normally tolerant book sellers said the image thieves -- mainly students looking for reference material -- were violating intellectual property rights.

... ... A man surnamed He said books were "too expensive" for students -- albeit those prepared to shell out for cameras and camera-equipped mobile phones. "Such books... often cost thousands of yuan for one copy," He told the paper. "We do this because it won't make sense to buy the whole book as we only want the content from some of the pages.""

When cameraphones started to become popular in 2004, digital shoplifting was one of the most widely reported problems in both South Korea and Japan:

-- Korean Cell phone users using their cameras to copy textbooks

-- Digital shoplifiting in Japan, a growing concern for publishers

-- A campaign in Japan to stop people from using camera-equipped cell phones to photograph magazines

-- What 8 Japanese teenagers think about digital shoplifting

Stealing the show? Cell phones capture concerts

While artists and concert venues typically ban cameras and recording devices, cell phones generally are allowed, reports mlive.com, even though today's communication devices often double/triple as digital cameras and video recorders - and end up posted on YouTube, like the Who concert (image left).

So what are concert venues and artists doing about this, if anything?

"For the most part, we have had no issues with phones," said Rich MacKeigan, Van Andel Arena manager. "Camera policy is absolutely dictated by the artist. It's enforced by the venue, but dictated by the artist. And (artists have) acknowledged that the quality of anything taken by cell phone is not significant enough to warrant the extreme measures that need to be taken to mitigate it."

Rather than viewing phones as "bootlegging" devices used to snag illicit recordings or photos of concerts, some rock stars even encourage their use as a way of interacting with the crowd, even talking on stage with callers on the other end of a front-row fan's cell phone.

... Because clips on sites such as YouTube get offered up and viewed for free -- whether taken by cell phone or digital video camera -- many ardent fans see it simply as a way of sharing their experiences with other devotees rather than trying to profit from the practice.

Some services -- DiscLive and Instant Live -- have started offering "authorized" concert recordings to fans of certain bands. The CDs sometimes are ready minutes after a performance has ended.

The telecommunication industry's Web site, Lightreading.com, recently ranked the top video-sharing Web sites, some of which feature digital concert clips uploaded by fans. "

Film Industry Wants Tougher Penalties For Piracy In New York

In a campaign against pirated films, the film industry wants stiffer penalties for people caught smuggling a camcorder into movie theaters in New York, reports Fox23.news.com.

"New York is a key target because it has the country's worst bootlegging problem and some of the weakest penalties for those caught doing it. Currently under state law, people caught videotaping in a movie theater in New York face a maximum fine of $250.

The Motion Picture Association of America is pushing a bill to make video piracy a criminal misdemeanor and raise the maximum fine to $1,000 with a year in jail. Making the crime a misdemeanor also lets police arrest violators on the spot instead of issuing them summonses. People caught for a second time would be charged with a felony.

One defense attorney says it could catch teenagers who use camera phones to take a picture during previews."

Picture from Inmagine.

Related articles on the crackdown on cinemas in the last few years.

Snap judgments

An interesting article from SignOnSanDiego.com on how amateurs taking better-looking photos is also becoming a bane as photofinishing labs increasingly are refusing to print their professional looking photographs.

The reason: Photofinishers are afraid of infringing on professional photographers' copyrights. [via Waxy-org: Links]

Cell phone users using their cameras to copy textbooks

Cell phones with built-in digital cameras, a popular item among young Koreans, are increasingly being used to illegally copy book contents, reports JoongAng Daily via Smart Mobs

"Kyobo Book Centre in Seoul's Gwanghwamun, the nation's largest bookstore, recently posted a placard that reads, "Photographing the cover and contents of books here violates the copyright law."

The bookseller said it hung such a warning because increasing numbers of people are secretly photographing book contents at the store rather than buying the books.

"Since last year, some customers have copied book contents using camera cell phones," said Kyobo employee Kwon Taek-gyeong yesterday.

Dongbo Bookstore in Busan also posted similar warnings.

"As camera cell phones are widespread recently and as there are many who want to save money on books due to economic hard times, illegal copying cases have increased," said Kim Yeong-eun, a staff member at the bookstore.

Books that are targeted for illegal copying are mostly expensive and specialized books such as design, architecture, computer and education books.

"I have seen many university students who photograph tables, pictures and other data from bookstores using their cell phones," said Jang Hey-jin, a graduate student in Busan. "They use the data to write papers."

Bookstore employees said most of the content thieves are students in their 20s and 30s.

Lee Seung-nam, an official at KT, a leading local telecommunications company, said yesterday that the use of mobile phone cameras to copy books is widespread due to the ease of use.

The official said a camera phone can take 100 to 200 photographs at a time, and that photos taken with such mobile phones can be easily magnified and viewed using a computer."

Last year bookstores were complaining about teenagers copying pages out of magazines.

Related articles:

-- Digital shoplifiting in Japan, a growing concern for publishers

-- A campaign to stop people from using camera-equipped cell phones to photograph magazines

-- What 8 teenagers think about digital shoplifting

Crackdown In Cinemas

At a recent showing of «Big Fish», several moviegoers at a local theatre held up camera-equipped cell phones and took snapshots of the screen. Doing the same with a video camera will soon be a crime. Along with other several states including California, Ohio has at Hollywood's urging passed a law that lets police arrest people for videotaping movies in theaters, reports CBSnews.

According to some experts, the movie industry should really be looking at it's own backyard, as a recent AT&T Labs study found that three of every four movies leaked on the Internet came from industry insiders.

Figures disputed by the MPAA, who says the researchers used flawed data.

"The movie industry says its internal analysis last year found that 92 per cent of recently released movies found on the Internet came from camcorders".

The industry estimates pirated movies cost it $3.5-billion annually.

Ohio's bill, signed in December by Gov. Bob Taft and taking effect in March, gives movie theaters the right to make a citizen's arrest if they suspect someone is making a pirate copy of a film".

Related articles:

-- Will You Be Arrested The Next Time You Bring Your Camera Phone To The Movies?

-- Five Years In Jail For Putting A Movie Online

-- Leave your picture phone outside the movie theater

-- Bag and body searches at screenings

The struggle against phone-cameras gets organized

In a much written-about-before topic, Marie-Michèle Vassiliou for 160characters.org looks into whether camera-phones are really a threat to industrial secrets, individual privacy and copyrights.

In Vassiliou's article there are some interesting facts that are new to Picturephoning.com:

-- "According to the Chosun Ilbo Daily, the very serious South Korean democratic party should soon put forward a bill to force manufacturers to build phones that would generate a noise when a picture is being taken, so as to warn the entourage.

-- A few months after Samsung, Hyundai and Kia Motors have banned camera-phones from their factories and research centers.

-- At the request of the police department, the New-Zealand subsidiary of Vodafone has set up an internal system to intercept photos transmitted on its mobile phone network. But the authorization of the judiciary is a prerequisite to warrant the individual liberties of the user.

Bag and body searches at screenings

Here's a first hand account from movie critic Mary F. Polls of measures taken at a private screening to avoid what has become the Motion Picture Association of America's number one foe - movies that bomb at the box-office notwithstanding - piracy. "The MPAA calculates the movie industry loses $3 billion annually to piracy, and that's not even counting Internet downloads of bootleg films, by far the fastest-growing segment".

"I only realized how serious the situation had become when security guards started showing up for screenings at the Variety Preview Room in San Francisco, where the media goes for private advanced screenings. No one gets in without an invitation, and with the exception of a few friends and the publicist, the audience is typically made up of professional journalists. It's one thing to be frisked for secret camera equipment on the way into "The Hulk," but for a press screening of the latest Merchant-Ivory flick, "Le Divorce"? I even got the wand treatment -- a scan for electronic equipment, including cell phones, which in some cases have been turned into recording devices -- at "Under the Tuscan Sun" last week".

One can't imagine camera phones and video phones doing much harm at this point - you can only view short clips. But still, the potential for ill use exists and can only get worse as technology improves.

What 8 teenagers think about digital shoplifting

Japan Today's Sachie Kanda dropped in on some teenagers to find out what they thought of digital shoplifting - people who visit book stores to photograph magazine pages with their cellphones rather than make a purchase.

Makoto Saito, 20
"You've just given me a good idea. From now on, I do not need to stand in crowded bookstores for hours to read the latest magazines. I can read them at home on my cell phone. You know, I can't help thinking that you in the media are just making the situation worse. If you didn't make a big deal about it, not many people would know about digital shoplifting."

Koji Sakurada, 23
"I don't think the camera in a cell phone is good enough to take a photo of detailed information on a magazine page.

Yuri Endo, 16
" Personally, though, I don't have the nerve to take a photo at a bookstore because my cell phone makes a noise when I take a photo. Sometimes I hear the noise in a train and I think it must be some pervert."

[...]

A campaign to stop people from using camera-equipped cell phones to photograph magazines

Following reports that digital shoplifters are on the rise in Japan -- people who visit book stores to photograph magazine pages with their cellphones rather than make a purchase, a group of Japanese publishers launched a campaign to stop people from using camera-equipped cell phones to photograph magazines instead of buying them, reports FinanceAsia.com. For the next two months, the association is posting notices at bookstores across the nation advising customers that such usage is illegal.

Digital shoplifiting in Japan, a growing concern for publishers

The Hindustan Times reports that Japanese publishers plan on launching a campaign this week to stop digital shoplifters -- people who visit book stores to photograph magazine pages with their cellphones rather than make a purchase.

"Digital shoplifting is becoming a big problem as camera-equipped mobile handsets are spreading fast and their quality is improving greatly, said an official at the Japan Magazine Publishers Association, Kenji Takahashi.

It's still unclear whether digital shoplifting is tantamount to a crime as the copyright law only covers use of information for commercial purposes.

In a related article in the BBC picked up on Smart Mobs, Toky correspondent Quentin Sommerville describes how young girls take pictures of hair styles in fashion magazines and send them off to their friends to know what they think. The publishers of those magazines are not happy and feel they are being cheated out of valuable sales. "Together with Japan's phone companies, they are issuing stern posters which warn shoppers to be careful of their "magazine manners".