New policy on author photos?

We make a strict policy of asking for permission to show author photos. Users have sent out hundreds of permission letters. I think this is the best policy. While most author photos are "publicity" photos, and, in theory, something they want out there, they aren't universally so. And some author photographers, like Marion Etlinger, sell books of their author photos. We've even received a few refusals. Of course, when the agree, photographers still want credit.

However, our main competitors allow anyone to upload a picture. They not only have no rules about permission, there isn't even a FIELD for crediting the photographer. So, of course, they have a lot of photos, including some we've been explicitly denied the use of!*

Strictly speaking, we don't NEED to do what we do. The DMCA only requires us to post some notice about not uploading copryrighted content, and respond when a rights holder issues a "take down" notice, at which point we say "copyrighted photos on our site—we're shocked, shocked!"

So, should we switch policies?

*I'm just waiting for my photo—my wife's author photo—to make it up there, so I can issue my own take-down request. :)

Yes.

No. If majority of sites does the wrong thing, it doesn't make it right. I think that using other people's work without permission is wrong. If you allow author photos without permission, why not allow copied reviews and so on?

>3 Anneli: Anneli
You've just expressed my view better than I could have.

All to often I see people that should know better (and do I suppose) doing the wrong thing because everyone else does and they figure that one more person isn't going to make any real difference.

I'm in the 'No' camp too, not least because it adds to LT's credibility that it worries about these things. I'd also be concerned that it would devalue the enormous amount of time and energy that people have given to collecting and monitoring the author photo gallery.

Another No here. I think it also serves in making LT more visible to authors. "LT wants to use my photo? Have to take a look at that..."
It's more work for us, but many of us probably don't mind writing a mail to an author we like.

Tim, I might go hunting for your wife's photo, just so that I can send out a a letter requesting permission ;-).

Another no here. There's nothing wrong with having high standards.

Another high standards are good so don't change.

I feel like we've boxed ourselves in. The fundamental web rule is "take down if asked." Then again, maybe it will get us some love someday from someone like the Author's Guild.

Sorry for the sour topic. I was just burning up over it last night. I almost sent the Shel Silverstein estate an angry letter that if they were going to take the trouble to deny rights to images of him, they should make sure to watch for people who aren't polite enough to ask. Then I decided that was low :)

The Shel Silverstein guys are amazing. When I worked at Houghton Mifflin we were making ebooks for our products. They used secured PDFs. Schools were demanding--and in some cases requiring--ebooks, although 99.9% never left the shrink-wrap. Anyway, we basically had a mandate to spend whatever authors wanted to ensure we cleared electronic rights. (School districts were demanding ebooks and, hey, its stuff like that that makes Kindergarten textbook cost $100.) The Silverstein estate wouldn't give us right for love nor money, so we had a big blank hole in the middle of our ebooks.

Seems bizarre that there is no picture of him available that is not owned by his estate. Some photographer must have snapped one--obviously he could be making money on this. I still think the TABASCO people were kind of funnier.

But I don't think we should change the policy. Sure, we don't have a picture of Shel Silverstein, but we have tons of other copyrighted photos that we have explicit permission for, and I have a feeling that in general we have more photos than most of our competitors. And probably most times you ask, "Should we be more like our competitors?" the answer will be no, because your users have already decided the other guys are a bunch of jerks.

I'm also in the "no" camp, although I'd probably agree with whatever you decided as you have to face the music if challenged. I like the idea of protecting copyright and asking for permission. It seems like the right thing to do.

What I would like to request, though, is for someone (who has obtained lots of photos) to compose a generic "Photo Request" letter on the wiki which I could quickly copy, modify, and use to request a photo. Having had such a form easily available for publishing houses is what made me, on the spur of the moment, write to a one asking them to join the LT Early Reviewer program (which they did).

I think by simply adding more and more "permissioned" photos, the blank photo areas will look more like the gaping holes they are from those who could give permission and don't. Those "gaping holes" will then more reflect the author's copyright policy (and perhaps stinginess) rather than LT's credibility.

I thought we had such a letter. Don't we? (Will check.)

If you find it, please let me know where it is. You probably have it, but it wouldn't hurt reminding me where it is. In my hasty check around LT, I couldn't find it.

Perhaps we could put it in a more prominent spot?

I thought we had such a letter too but now I can't find it on either the Author Photos group or the Wiki. Could be buried in an Author Photos Talk thread but that's not super helpful.

I finally found it!

http://www.librarything.com/authorletter.php?author=

We do need to move that option of creating such a letter into a more prominent spot, I think.

LT is a very complicated site of which, I would venture to guess, most members know very little. It might be helpful to point them to all of the "What To Do on LT" areas without them having to just chance across them.

ETA: I'm linking this letter to my wiki as I'll probably never be able to find it again!! ...and nperrin still hasn't found it! ;-)

LT is a very complicated site

I know. The core stuff is, I still feel, not hard. But it's an ocean too.

But it's an ocean too.

That's what makes it fun. It's like a scavenger hunt! ;-)

ETA: ...which gives me another idea. Why not have a scavenger hunt to find all of LT's treasures? :-)

No, we should not.

Right is right. None of this "it's okay until we get caught" stuff, please!

Regarding that letter, is there a place to keep track of who's been asked? If authors get asked multiple times by different people, they'll develop a justly deserved negative opinion of LT.

Hmmm ...

I have a buddy who worked at Playboy for 25 years ... since Shel Silverstein wrote a lot for them, there are probably hundreds of photos owned by Hef & Co. floating around. Perhaps one of those might be useful (and, depending on the photograph one might be able to give the estate the choice of "Shel with naked playmates" going up on the site or them providing some nice publicity shot!).

Heh ...

 

I'm asking for a "no" as well. I have a brother who is a photographer and just knowing what he goes through to keep his stock photography secure...really, people will steal anything. I also don't want LT to become the "Perez Hilton" of book sites (okay, not that we'll draw crude images on author photos, but the part where we just take stuff because it's "on the internet").

If I were a dreamer, I'd like to see the following:

a) show somewhere on the author page that a permission letter was sent (somewhere an individual can upload the e-mail address & date sent). Also, if we've clearly been denied permission by an author, if that could be noted that would help folks.
b) a clearer link to the photo permission letter (you have to really try to find it now)

and (pie in the sky)
c) a nice long rant on why Sonny Bono's efforts to protect the Walt Disney company when Micky was going to fall into the Public Domain has made things so crazy...

No--absolutely not. The main thing that made me choose LT above any other cataloging site / software for my books is the fact that you all are more respectable and responsible. And do you really want to lower upload standards specifically so that we can have photos that have been denied to LT?

#22c - who knew?

I vote with the strict constructionists; no photo without permission.

--> 20

Since there are what seems to me like an infinite number of authors, I don't think there should be just one place to keep track of who has been asked.

The proper location for that information, I think, would be on the "Add a Picture for (author's name)" page. A simple line stating that permission was denied by "x" for permission to post a photo along with a date would suffice. Could that somehow be incorporated onto that page as an alternative to the picture upload information?

I agree that we at LT should not be continuously asking the same author for permission to post a photo if that is not to the author's liking.

> 20

It's not, though, merely a question of whether the author has been asked and refused permission. It's a question of whether the copyright holder of a specific image has been asked and has refused.

So any such statement on the author page, or "add a picture" page, needs to quite clear as to not only who was asked, but what image was being inquired about. This could get quite complex, and lenghthy, depending on who the author is.

>26 lilithcat:

Generally-speaking the author has publicity rights. More generally, if there's a central point to ask, it's usually the author. You can't know the true history of every contract ever written, but if the author says you can use it, they're the one who'd know you couldn't, and you have enough, I think.

Does anyone want to make a wiki section for this stuff, with the letter and a checklist of authors? Someone also sent me a Spanish-translation of the letter, which is pretty cool. I think the Wiki is the right place for this stuff, not making new HTML pages.

Y'all are making me feel like a criminal for voting 'Yes'.

NO!

I'm not sure whether or not this should be changed... I'm wondering, though, why there's a difference between author photos and book covers. Shouldn't we technically be asking for permission to reproduce those, too?

31

Yeah, what about that?

>29 BOB81: the criminals are the ones making it necessary to vote at all...

"Fair Use" is the short answer for 31 & 32. There's also the matter of free advertising for the book.

In a very simplified version, one can basically call a book cover the only real way to fairly represent a book when you're posting a photo of it. An author's image, on the other hand, can be represented in a myriad of ways.

This may really seem like splitting hairs, but images of people are very different than scans of covers of books. Books, CDs, DVDs and the like are subject to review and a copy of the cover generally is the only way to show the book (if one chooses to show it at all). There's also the complicated mess of those that have purchased the book - you can take a photo of the cover of your book (there's a percentage of text you can even safely copy, but that's a whole different mess and one you can demonstrate for yourself if you go through a book with "Suprise me!" sections on Amazon).

The author's image is protected and generally the professional photographs will be copyrighted by agencies and/or photographers (David Rosengarten wrote a kind note and forwarded my permission letter to his publicist who has yet to respond 4 months later). You can meet an author and take a photo and it belongs to you - and then it is yours to do with as you see fit. If you're papparazo, you're selling the images for a living. If you're a fan at a book fair, hopefully you're uploading them to LT since you own the copyright. =)

See, I knew if I waited for awhile someone would explain. I knew the answer to 31/32 had something to do with "fair use" and was explained in another thread and Amazon was referenced, but thanks for expanding and helping me understand, stephmo!

>34 stephmo:

Nicely explained.

Incidentally, neither Amazon nor any other cover provider (Bowker, Baker and Taylor, Muse, etc.) have special rights to covers. They rely on the same logic.

Covers become a copyright issue when they are being used for some other purpose that illustrating something for sale or commentary. The is why you can only get images of a certain size from Amazon and other providers. A really large cover could be used to make posters, for example. Your right to show a cover on a website isn't the same as the right to make posters of the cover and sell it to college students.

So what if the cover art is a photo of the author? :)

... holding his own book!

>37 PaulFoley:

As long as it is being used to represent the book and not the author, it is fine to use. So, yes to book page, no to author page.

I said it gets murky - I'm not a copyright lawyer, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night! I just read a few things on wikipedia once!

But >36 timspalding: also has another piece of the puzzle - size of the cover does matter.

Tim's just being a smarty-pants =-)~

Although are there photos of authors holding the covers of their books as the covers of the book? It really does sound like something Steve Martin would have done...but I don't know...although I'm sure that's his back on The Pleasure of My Company....

What if I were to paint up all my author photos to look like Warhol silkscreens. Would I own the copyrights then?

I have the solution... partially suggested in #34.

I volunteer to be the Crack LT Author Photography Squad (CLAPS). LT will fly me all over the world, putting me up in top hotels and I will stalk and photograph authors on demand.

To save money, I have my own digital camera.

Jim

What if I were to paint up all my author photos to look like Warhol silkscreens. Would I own the copyrights then?

Yes, but so would the original artist.

#42: A much cheaper (and faster) solution would cast you as Crack LT Author Model (CLAM). You dress up and use cosmetics to look exactly like any author we demand and set up your camera for remote control from LT headquarters so the photographer (and thus copyright holder) will be someone LT can trust (or control). Of course you might have to change your username to justanyone while you CLAM up, but in return you'll get our eternal gratitude plus considerable artistic freedom when modelling authors like A. Nonymous, No Name and Homeros. Copyright issues should be carefully considered before extending this to video clips and 3D-scans, so I suggest we put those on hold until all the portraits are done.

Obviously I am in the minority here, but I vote yes. And especially yes for authors who put their photos on their books.

#38: I have a book like that!

I like the CLAM idea, but I'm still voting 'Yes'.

I would have to agree with alot of other people here and say no.
Following copyright law will allow this sight to maintain a professional and respected site, and eventually the authors( and sometimes publishers) that previously refused to grant rights, may find themselves sending in thier photos and books, because they realize the money that's involved in getting your name (and face) out there.

I also agree with the others who say no; please continue to follow the policy of respecting our authors, treating copyright seriously and asking permission for their images to be used.

re >45 lorin77: - "And especially yes for authors who put their photos on their books."
I don't agree as the photographer usually owns the copyright for many book cover photos. Why can't they have their skill and talent recognised and be asked for permission for the image they took to be used on another commercial site?

> 45

Authors do not "put their photos on their books". Their publishers do.

my vote is no.

keep the ethics.
keep the higher standards.

you will get the higher level of respect... and you do have it.

I say yes, but I haven't cared much about my photo gallery for the last few months so it probably no longer matters very much to me.

I guess I'd like less obsessive control of the pictures. If I scan a picture from a book jacket of a guy who's been dead for fifty years, I don't think it should be a problem to post his photo. I also think we should be able to use the photos from the author's and publisher's websites.

On the other hand, I don't think we should copy current photos from just anywhere (yes, then we should have permission). Unfortunately, making rules for this vague notion of mine would be impossible. :)

> 52

If I scan a picture from a book jacket of a guy who's been dead for fifty years, I don't think it should be a problem to post his photo. I also think we should be able to use the photos from the author's and publisher's websites. '

Even if those images or websites are copyrighted?

>52 xorscape:

Publishers are really great about responding promptly if you ask them if you can use an image. The problem with just using all the photos off a publisher's website is that frequently, they don't own the copyright, they just license the photo from the photographer. Many times, that license will extend to publicity on sites such as LT, but sometimes it won't. Just check with the publisher. Since it really isn't a big deal to do this legally, I don't think LT should change its standards, especially if the reason is so that we can get photos that we wouldn't be able to get legally.

Might I also suggest when asking for permission to use an image, to add that "just in case this one can't be used, could you point us to another one that can"?