Intellectual Property Law Debate

Image Copyright

Intellectual property laws are the subject of much debate. Indeed, some people feel as if the ability to use another person's photo or likeness without payment or other remuneration should be allowed and free while the law itself basically bans such a practice unless such uninhibited usage is granted in advance. As with most things, there is a middle ground between the two that could and should be sought but the middle ground is going to favor the intellectually property proponents much more than the opponents. While the intellectual property people have valid gripes to some degree, there is a need for intellectual property law and the author of this report will offer specific examples of why this needs to be the case.

Analysis

A major linchpin of the argument for the free and unblocked use of photos by people other than those that are authorized or that took the picture is that copying a photo from an online source does not "hurt' the person who took the photo because a copy can be made without hurting the original. Much the same argument is made in other realms of intellectual property law such as with software, music, video, movies and television shows. However, the general argument to quash that is that there is money and time invested into the making and publishing of those works of art or entertainment and the people who created them have a right to profit and make money from those images, videos and programs. The author of this report agrees with the latter as it takes a lot of time and ability to snap the right pictures. For someone else to just snatch those with no compensation is wrong. For that same person to use them for their own marketing and advertising is even worse because someone did the work to take the pictures and is not being paid for the use of those photos (Sprigman, 2015).

Another reason that photographs should not be used without compensation and permission is because those pictures commonly have people in them and the use of those likenesses cannot and should not be used without limit by anyone who happens to come across them. Beyond that, there are often contracts in place by the people being snapped (or their representatives) so as to limit how those pictures are used. Indeed, Taylor Swift caught some heat for the contracts that her people put in place for her images but the practice is fairly common in the industry (Kenneally, 2015).

As noted before, some people on the pro-intellectual property side take things too far. For example, there have been cameras destroyed and people assaulted for the snapping of pictures in a public setting. Of course, if the rules about pictures apply to the photographers and such, the same should hold true for pictures taken in a public setting. Even so, there are lines drawn and they should be enforced if they are crossed. For example, if a celebrity is photographed in an area thought to be private, then that would be a violation of intellectual property ethics (and probably the law). Similarly, if a concert ticket and signs on the doors to that concert assert that there is a no-photo policy, the same would hold true. That being said, enforcing such a policy in the age of the smartphone is exceedingly hard to pull off and the pictures gleaned from a concert are likely going to be from a far distance, blurry or otherwise poor. Beyond that, the pictures cannot be used for monetary gain in at least most cases anyway since doing so would be a violation of the law. However, they still try nonetheless (Shu, 2013).

One major exception to the last sentence is also a black eye when it comes to intellectual property law and that would be the paparazzi. Indeed, pictures taken in public of stars and starlets in compromising and unexpected situations can yield a great amount of money from the tabloid and gossip rags like Us Weekly, People and the like (Us Weekly, 2015; People, 2015). However, those paparazzi are relentless, sometimes invade the privacy of the people they are taking pictures of and they engage in some very dangerous behavior as they zoom around in their cars. Indeed, many people blame paparazzi for the death of Princess Diana (Huffington Post, 2012).