American Society of Media Photographers, a trade association for professional photographers, has converted its standard model and property release forms into a free downloadable app for iPhones and iPads. The app is available now through the iTunes store.

As ASMP explains on its Web site, the releases use standard release language, relevant to most still and motion projects that photographers might license. With the app, models (and parents or guardians of minors who are subjects of a photo), property owners and witnesses can sign the release using a finger or stylus on the touch screen. The signed releases indicate they have given consent to be photographed and given permission to the photographer to use the image. Each release includes fields which can be customized for entering information on the model or property.

With the camera on iPhones and iPads, you can take a photo of the subject or property to attach to the release. A PDF file of the signed release can then be sent via email to a client, stock agency or your own computer.

Standard model and property release language provides a level of protection if the subject files claims for defamation or invasion of privacy. Leslie Burns, a photography consultant who recently became a lawyer, recently noted in the PDN article “5 Things You Should Not Do Yourself” that there are exceptions. Burns advised that if you shoot erotica, nudes, “or kids in any way, shape or form,” consult a lawyer about your model releases “because there’s a greater risk of getting sued,” she said.

Related articles:
5 Things You Should Not Do Yourself

Vampire Weekend (Model Release) Case Dismissed

Vampire Weekend Album Cover Model Sues Band, Photographer for $2Million (archived)

© Kristina Hill

When wedding photographer Kristina Hill learned that her engagement photo of a same-sex couple had been used without her permission in a political flyer attacking same-sex marriage, she told PDN she wasn’t sure she had the resources to pursue a long legal battle. Now Hill and her clients have an ally. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the civil rights organization, yesterday sent a cease and desist order to Public Advocate of the United States, a right-wing political organization, demanding they confirm they are no longer using the image. In the order,  SPLC also says they are considering other possible legal action for infringing Hill’s copyright.

Hill’s photo shows Tom Privitere and Brian Edwards, a New Jersey couple, kissing. Public Advocate of the United States used the photo without the permission of Hill or her clients in a flyer attacking Republican Colorado State Senator Jean White, who had supported civil unions for same-sex couples. The photo, digitally altered to strip out the New York City skyline, appears under the words “State Senator Jean White’s idea of ‘family values?’”

Public Advocate had defended its unauthorized use of the image on the grounds that others “make fair use of our materials.”

SPLC has previously labeled Public Advocate “a hate group,” and noted in a statement released yesterday that it has “a history of attacking the LGBT community.” The statement quotes Christine Sun, deputy legal director at the SPLC, saying that the alteration and unauthorized use of Hill’s photo was “morally reprehensible.” Sun says, “This latest attack is the most vicious yet and should serve as a warning that your personal photos are not safe from anyone willing to stoop to the vilest level of harassment.”

In the SPLC statement, Hill says she took the engagement photo to document her clients’ love. “When I saw how my image was used, I was sad for Brian and Tom. I was angry that someone would take my work, distort it and use it to reflect the opposite of what it was meant to express.”

Related Article
Wedding Photographer Might Sue for Copyright Infringement Over Anti-Gay Attack Ad

A news photographer who claimed wrongful arrest while covering a student protest in 2009 will receive a $162,500 settlement from the University of California, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported. UC Berkeley police will also receive media rights training as part of the settlement.

UC Berkeley police arrested photographer David Morse at the scene of a protest at the home of the University of California chancellor. Police allegedly told Morse they wanted his camera in order to identify protesters who committed acts of vandalism at the scene. They then arrested Morse along with several others on charges of rioting, arson and vandalism.

Police then got a search warrant to access his images, and they published several of them to get public help identifying people in the photos, according to the San Francisco Chronicle report.

Prosecutors declined to pursue the charges against Morse, who then sued the University of California in federal court after UC Berkeley police refused to compensate him for violation of his rights.

Related stories:
Boston to Pay $170K for Wrongful Arrest of Videographer
Mannie Garcia Files $500K Lawsuit for Unlawful Arrest
Department of Justice Warns Police Against Violating Photographers’ Rights

Sheriff’s deputies in Nevada allegedly pushed a 60-year-old Reno Gazette-Journal photographer to the ground and shoved his face into some gravel, the newspaper has reported. The incident happened at the scene of a city fire. The deputies ended up citing the photographer for obstruction and resisting their orders.

Tim Dunn,  a 21-year veteran of the paper, said that after he identified himself to an officer at the scene, he was ordered to move down a hill, away from the fire, where other media had been directed. Dunn objected, but said he was moving as he’d been ordered to do when the deputies arrived, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. He suffered minor injuries to his face.

Dunn is quoted in the RG-J report: “My rights were violated, and the force they used was not necessary.”

Beryl Love, executive editor of the paper, called the treatment of Dunn “shocking” and said the paper would file a formal administrative complaint.

Click here to read the full story.

Update: The Associated Press reported today (6/25) that Dunn has filed a formal complaint, citing the use of excessive force by sheriff’s deputies during his arrest last week.

Related stories:
Police Intimidation Watch: Mannie Garcie Files $500K Lawsuit for Unlawful Arrest
Police Intimidation Watch: Photog Sues a Long Island Police Department
Police Intimidation Watch: Boston to Pay $170K for Wrongful Arrest of Videographer

Veteran news photographer Mannie Garcia has sued several Montgomery County, Maryland police officers, alleging violation of his civil rights and physical and emotional suffering as a result of being “manhandled” and arrested without cause in June, 2011. Garcia is seeking $500,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages to be determined.

Garcia, who lost his White House Press Pass as a result of his arrest, was confronted by the police officers after he began recording them arresting two Hispanic men on the night of June 16, 2011. The incident occurred in Wheaton, Maryland after Garcia left a restaurant and happened to see police arresting the men.

According to his claim, Garcia became concerned that the police action “might be inappropriate and/or that they might be using excessive force.” Garcia took his camera out and began recording. He was then approached by one of the officers, and identified himself as a member of the press.

Garcia said nothing else, however, but moved further back when a second officer shined a flashlight in his face.

According to Garcia’s lawsuit, the first officer “did not like the fact that Mr. Garcia continued to record their actions with the camera, so he lost his temper, became enraged, screamed, ‘That’s it!’ and placed Mr. Garcia under arrest.”

Garcia alleges that the first officer placed him in a choke hold, dragged him across the street to a police cruiser, and “repeatedly threw Mr. Garcia to the ground” before handcuffing him. He alleges that he sustained injuries to his neck, shoulder and back “while being manhandled” during his arrest.

According to police reports, Garcia was arrested for disorderly conduct. His camera was confiscated at the scene, and Garcia was taken to a police station, where he alleges that he saw one of the officers remove the battery and memory card from his camera. The camera was eventually returned without the memory card.

While he was awaiting trial, the Secret Service became aware of the charges against him and revoked his White House Press Pass. He was unable to work as a result, he says in his lawsuit.

Finally, Garcia came before a judge in a bench trial last December and was found not guilty on all charges against him.

Garcia is suing on the grounds that the Montgomery Count police officers violated his First, Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The violations included unlawful arrest, false imprisonment, cruel and unusual punishment, malicious prosecution, deprivation of his property without due process, and interference with his right of free speech.

In addition to naming the arresting officers as defendants, Garcia is also suing Montgomery County and its chief of police for failing to properly train police officers–specifically, for failing to train them that openly recording a police officer is a lawful act in Maryland.

Garcia also alleges that the county is indifferent to police misconduct, and that it fails to investigate complaints of misconduct or discipline officers who engage in misconduct. (Garcia says his complaints to the police about misconduct of the officers were ignored.)

Garcia filed his claim in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division. (Case 8:12-cv-01711-DKC)

A trial date has not been set.

Related articles:

Police Intimidation Watch: Photog Sues a Long Island Police Department
Police Intimidation Watch: Photographers Cleared of Charges in New York, Seattle
Department of Justice Warns Police Against Violating Photographers’ Rights

New Mexico’s appeals court has confirmed that wedding photographers who refuse to shoot same-sex weddings violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

New Mexico Court of Appeals judge Timothy L. Garcia affirmed two previous rulings that Elane Photography of Albuquerque violated the New Mexico Human Rights Act when they refused to photograph the wedding of a same-sex couple on religious grounds.

The NMHRA prohibits businesses offering services to the public from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The appeals court rejected Elane Photography’s arguments that forcing them to photograph a same-sex wedding under NMHRA amounted to a violation of their freedom of speech or freedom of religion protections.

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission originally ruled in 2008 that Elane Photography violated the state law. A trial court affirmed the NMHRC decision in 2010, triggering a second appeal to the New Mexico Court of Appeals.

The case arose after plaintiff Vanessa Willock inquired about hiring Elane Photography to photograph her commitment ceremony. She indicated it was a “same-gender” ceremony. The owners fo Elane Photograph–Elaine and Jonahtna Huguenin–responded that they photographed only “traditional” weddings. Willock followed up, asking Elane to clarify whether “it does not offer photography services to same-sex couples.” Elane photography responded, “Yes, you are correct in saying we do not photograph same-sex weddings.”

The next day, Willock’s partner sent an e-mail inquiring about photography for her wedding, without mentioning that it was a same-sex ceremony. Elane Photography responded by sending pricing information, indicating a willingness to travel to the wedding, and offering to meet to discuss options.

Willock filed a claim for discrimination with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, and won her case. The NMHRC awarded her $6,638 in attorney’s fees. She did not seek monetary damages.

The appeals court re-examined all of the arguments that Elane Photography presented  in its original appeal to a state trial court, and rejected them one after another.

For instance, Elane Photography argued that it refused to photograph a same sex-wedding, but that didn’t amount to discrimination against Willock because Elane Photography would have photographed her in other contexts, such as portrait sessions, for example. But the court said that amounted to “attempt[ing] to justify impermissible discrimination” by separating Willock’s actions from her status as a member of a protected class. The argument, the court went on to say, “is without merit.”

Elane Photography also argued that the NMHRA violated rights of freedom of expression protected by the US and New Mexico constitutions. The basis of that argument was that photography is an artistic expression protected by the First Amendment.

But the appeals court batted down that argument, too: “the NMHRA regulates Elane Photography’s conduct in its commercial business, not its speech or right to express its own views about same-sex relationships. As a result, Elane Photography’s commercial business conduct, taking photographs for hire, is not so inherently expressive as to warrant First Amendment protections.” The court explained that taking pictures of a same-sex wedding doesn’t by itself convey a (constitutionally protected) message of approval or disapproval of same sex marriage, the court explained. “[A]n observer might simply assume that Elane Photography operates a business for profit and will accept any commercially viable photography job.”

Similarly, Elane Photography argued that forcing it, under the NMHRA, to photograph a same-sex wedding would violate its freedom of religion protections. But the appeals court said the NMHRA doesn’t prevent the owners of Elane Photography from practicing their religion. And the court reasoned,  “Elane Photography voluntarily entered public commerce and, by doing so, became subject to generally applicable regulations such as the NMHRC. When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes [that] are binding on others in that activity.”

The owners of Elane Photography were not immediately available for comment. It is not clear whether they plan to appeal the latest ruling to the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The full text of the ruling can be downloaded here.

A federal court judge has ruled that the Authors Guild and the American Society of Media Photographers have standing to sue Google on behalf of their members to try to stop the Google Books program. The trade associations have filed two separate lawsuits on the grounds that Google is copying millions of books without permission, in violation of copyright law.

The interim ruling in the case, issued today also cleared the way for Authors Guild members to press their case as a class action lawsuit, which Google had tried to prevent.

The ruling is a procedural decision, not a final ruling on the merits of the case. But it is important because it effectively blocks Google from using a divide-and-conquer strategy to defeat the claims of the plaintiffs.

The full story is now on PDNOnline.

A student photographer has been cleared in court of disorderly conduct charges stemming from his arrest in New York City at the scene of an Occupy march in January, the Associated Press reports. Separately, prosecutors in Seattle decided to drop charges against a photographer arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer there during May Day protest, The Seattle Times reports.

Video from the scene of the arrests helped clear the photographers in both cases.

In New York, police accused New York University photography student Alexander Arbuckle of blocking traffic at an Occupy protest march on January 1. He maintained that he was photographing from the sidewalk at the time of his arrest. At trial, the judge dismissed the charges after Arbuckle’s defense attorneys showed a video by another journalist showing police massing near people on the sidewalk, and then arresting them, according to AP.

In the Seattle incident, photographer Joshua Garland was accused of grabbing and twisting the arm of a police officer at a May Day protest in downtown Seattle. The Seattle Times reports that prosecutors decided they couldn’t prove the charges against Garland after his defense attorney showed a video of the incident. According to that same report, the attorney pieced the video together from “video segments posted on YouTube by witnesses and other footage shot by a local television station.”

As we’ve reported in our coverage of photographer Patrick Cariou’s infringement claim against Richard Prince, Prince and his defenders argue that appropriation art does little harm to individuals from whom appropriation artists steal their raw materials. Their implied question: Where would civilization be without the great works of appropriation artists like Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg?

Credit The Art Newspaper, a British publication, with taking on that argument. Yesterday they reported that Warhol, Rauschenberg and other big name appropriation artists quit stealing the work of others–and started getting licenses instead–after they got sued once or twice (or five times) for infringement.

“There is growing evidence—albeit rarely reported—that, although these artists may have started out as willing or unwitting outlaws, they decided that possibly infringing other artists’ copyright was legally unwise and potentially expensive, and they stopped,” writes Laura Gilbert for The Art Newspaper.

She reports that Andy Warhol faced lawsuits in the 1960s for unauthorized use of photographs by Patricia Caulfield, Fred Ward, and Charles Moore. He settled the claims out of court, and afterwards started asking for permission before incorporating works by others into his own creations. “He learned a lesson from the lawsuits,” Warhol’s gallerist, Ronald Feldman, told Gilbert.

Robert Rauschenberg was sued in the 1970s for unauthorized use of one of Morton Beebe’s photographs. After settling the suit in 1980, Rauschenberg reportedly quit appropriating the work of other artists. Jeff Koons, another appropriation artist who was famously sued (and lost) over the “String of Puppies” sculpture he copied without permission from a photograph, no longer uses the work of others without permission, his lawyer told The Art Newspaper.

Gilbert cites other examples, too. The message is that former art pirates with big names weren’t above the law, after all, and when they were sued into compliance, it wasn’t the end of appropriation art, much less civilization.

Richard Prince has already been held liable for infringement by a federal trial court judge. His appeal is pending. A victory for Prince, it seems, would put him in a special class of pirates with immunity, pretty much by himself.

Related:
Appropriation Artist Richard Prince Liable for Infringement, Court Rules
In Cariou v. Prince, an Appeal to Clarify a Crucial Fair Use Boundary

Photographer Daniel Morel, who had his exclusive Haiti earthquake images ripped off by Agence France-Presse and Getty more than two years ago, has released more evidence in his claim against the two wire services in his ongoing fight for justice.

The new details, which are part of a motion Morel filed last month asking the judge to hold Getty and AFP liable for infringement, were sent by Morel’s lawyer to PDN and several others. They are neatly summarized by Jeremy Nicholl on The Russian Photos Blog.

Nicholl leads off by quoting an internal e-mail from AFP deputy photo editor for North America Eva Hambach:  “AFP got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, and will have to pay.” Ten days after Hambach wrote that to a colleague in March, 2010, AFP slapped Morel with a lawsuit to gag him and punish him for publicly accusing AFP of violating his copyrights.

To re-cap, Morel–a native of Haiti and a former AP photographer–was in Haiti at the time of the January, 2010 earthquake. He posted exclusive images of the destruction on his Twitpic account less than two hours later. The images were immediately stolen and re-posted under the name of another Twitter user. AFP picked up the images and distributed them under the false credit through its own image service and through Getty. They did that even though editors at both companies knew that the images were Morel’s, and that they did not have his permission to distribute them.

Morel objected. His agent, Corbis, sent take-down notices to Getty and AFP, but it took AFP two days to issue a kill notice. And when they did, they told clients and partners to kill images credited to Morel, but not the identical images that had been sent out initially under the false credit. Getty allegedly didn’t purge the images with the false credits, and continued to distribute them.

With Morel continuing to insist that his copyrights had been violated, AFP sued, and Morel fought back. Getty and AFP have done their best to wear Morel down by dragging out the process, but the photographer has refused to give up. He has already won an important decision against AFP, which argued that anything posted on Twitpic is free for the taking, according to the Twitpic terms of service. The court summarily rejected that defense.

Meanwhile, Getty continues to try to hide behind the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The company says, in effect, that it was merely a passive provider of server space to AFP so it shouldn’t be held liable as an infringer. On the grounds that Getty is AFP’s partner and an active marketer and distributor of AFP images, Morel is asking the court to reject Getty’s DMCA defense.

What it boils down to is a case of two companies bullying a photographer they got caught stealing from. AFP and Getty aren’t the first to move images without permission in a cutthroat business that has a history of steal-now-and-apologize-later tactics. What’s unusual is the unwillingness of the two companies to own up to their ethical lapse and legal breach by apologizing and quietly paying to settle it.

We contacted Hambach to ask her about the internal repercussions of her “cookie jar” e-mail. Was she taken to the woodshed for it? Is there any sign that AFP is taking stock of its policies with regard to recouping images? “I can’t talk about this now,” she said, ending the conversation at the mention of her e-mail.

A hearing on Morel’s motion for summary judgment is scheduled for July. The judge is unlikely to issue a decision before fall.