September 24, 2007
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What a weekend. (Not because the in-laws were in town) The Terps gave up a 21-point lead and lost. And then the Redskins blew a 14-point lead and lose. ugh.
The World Wide Web is an interesting place. The ability to do so much without thinking about what one is doing. It seems like the great old WWW has opened up the flood gates for these things. If you haven’t heard a 16 year old girl who posted her photo on Flickr.com had the image used in an Australian print ad for Virgin Mobile. The parents got wind of it and are suing for libel and invasion of privacy. Now does posting a picture on the web remove the “libel and invasion of privacy”? A place where billions of people can view (unless of course there is some access control involved which there doesn’t seem to be) the picture? From what I heard Texas has a law about fair compensation for commercial use but that’s not what the lawsuit is about. Without reading Fickr’s EULA I’ve only heard that there are privacy settings when posting pictures. The poster of the picture opted for the a “shared license” which means anyone can use as long as they site where the got the picture from.
From where I sit, it sounds like Virgin Mobile is in the right and this should be a lesson learned that the World Wide Web is not a totally safe place with all the rights you think you have. (How many people actually read all the EULA’s that we all agree too?) The Web is a great place to share your thoughts, pictures and other stuff but do people really know about proper copyright protection or fair use laws?
