Artist visa renewals get easier for UK applicants

Good news for artist visa holders from the UK: when it's time to renew your visa, the US Consulate in London may reissue the visa without you having to attend an interview in London. In order to qualify, you have to meet certain requirements such as having provided a full set of fingerprints when you last applied for your visa. More info on eligibility for the expedited process is available here, from the consulate's website. Hopefully, other US consulates will start following the London consulate's lead!

Hardcore Infringement

Oh the irony!  Back in January, I brought you the story of a Dutch court whose decision in a copyright infringement lawsuit plagiarized (and possibly infringed) another lawyer's work. Well, those fast and loose copyright attorneys are at it again. A Chicago lawyer named John Steele has filed a lawsuit suing hundreds (if not thousands) of file-sharers for copyright infringement on behalf of First Time Videos LLC, "a leading producer and distributor of adult entertainment content within the transsexual niche." But Mr. Steele sets a poor example for all the porno buffs out there who just got sued. According to Ars Technica, the complaint that Mr. Steele filed with the court is itself a glittering monument to infringement, with swathes of text lifted word-for-word from complaints filed by another company, the U.S. Copyright Group. Fortunately for Mr. Steele, the U.S. Copyright Group doesn't mind. Says Tom Dunlap, who wrote the filings that Mr. Steele infringed, "I don't know Steele but I'm flattered he likes my pleadings."

In Mr. Steele's defense, he's not an expert in copyright law. He makes his bread and butter from matrimonial cases and his number (if you happen to be in northern Illinois) is 1-800-DIVORCE.

via Ars Technica.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Innovative Design Protection and Privacy Prevention Act

Early this summer, I wrote a post about how fashion designers are bereft of copyright protection. Turns out, Chuck Schumer and the Council of Fashion Designers of America are trying to do something about it. In August, Senator Schumer introduced proposed legislation into Congress that, if passed, would extend limited copyright protection to fashion designs. Specifically, the new legislation would protect any fashion design from being copied for a period of three years from the date the fashion design is made public. You can read the bill here.

Clearly, a lot of designers are in support of the proposed legislation. On the other hand, Johanna Blakley, our fashion theorist in a bullet-proof vest from early this summer, points out that "right now, designers pore over vintage magazines and patterns and visit museum archives in order to find inspiration for the next season’s look, cherry picking design elements that feel fresh and in line with the current zeitgeist. It’s a refreshingly open process unhindered by legal consultations. Those archives could become battlefields where litigants try to find evidence to support their assertion that a design is or is not unique. The geeky librarian in me is worried that some powerful people may attempt to limit access to particularly rich collections of design history and some unscrupulous types may destroy or hide rare materials that prove that their new design isn’t as unique as they claim."

The perils of licensing defunct texts

The unfortunate thing about our present copyright system is that some copyright owners are easy to find and some are not. I wrote previously about how this phenomenon affects academics, so I really enjoyed a recent blog entry entitled "Don't do Art History" by Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge, about her harrowing experiences trying to get rights to reproduce photos from the Soprintendenza of Pompeii and other characters.

Everything you ever wanted to know about artist visas

I get a lot of questions about artist visas so I added a page on my website about them (plug for my law practice: artist visa preparation is one of my practice areas).

View it at www.justinlynchlaw.com/artist_visas.html.

What's so great about copyright if fashion designers do well without it?

One of the traditional justifications for copyright law is that without it, creative people will be discouraged from creating.  The fashion industry is a counterexample, because it has flourished in the absence of copyright protection for clothing (clothes are considered too "utilitarian" to qualify for copyright protection, in the same way that a recipe or a park bench can't be copyrighted, no matter how fanciful).  Of course, creativity has never needed copyright law, which was only recently invented anyway.  Johanna Blakley, in her entertaining presentation on copyright and the fashion industry, displays a chart that shows that revenues in "low IP" industries such as clothing and food dwarf those of "high IP" industries such as music, books and films.  But the clothing and food industries also have going for them the fact that without clothing and food, we'd all be naked and starving: their survival in the absence of copyright protection is no surprise.  Revenues aside, Ms. Blakley has some interesting observations about how the lack of copyright protection in the fashion industry may contribute to increased innovation.

But the big unanswered question in this presentation on fashion and the law is why Ms. Blakley is wearing a jacket that looks like it was inspired by a bullet-proof vest.   

Photo Licensing 101

Getty Images has launched a new website to educate people on the nuts and bolts of photo licensing. Developed in response to a survey that found a woeful level of misinformation, even among creative industry professionals, about the legal aspects of using photos found on the Internet (for example, um... the importance of getting permission from the photographer, not to mention the model), www.stockphotorights.com provides "an educational resource for image buyers and a go-to place for debate, discussion, news and information for members of the photography community."

The site contains a lot of great information, albeit with a few inaccuracies (for example, the FAQs at one point seem to imply that all photographs are under copyright, which isn't true). Needless to say, the site also encourages image users to license their images from stock photo agencies such as Getty Images. That said, the good thing about licensing through Getty Images and similar agencies is that they will tell you whether or not a model release has been obtained for a particular photo and the purposes for which the photo can be used, and, in the event that they failed to obtain the permissions that they promised they obtained, they will indemnify you if you get in trouble as a result (i.e., they will foot the bill).

The video below, from the site's homepage, explains the various rights that different people may have with respect to a single image: it is necessary that permission from all rights holders be obtained before using an image.