Your image - your rights

[Mike McCarty]

Who is the press and how do they prove that they are? Is it by certificate, a license, a press pass? Or, is it a state of mind?

If it is my intent to "spread the news" of portrait art, and I choose you as part of my copy, who would dispute that (Other than plaintiffs lawyer)?

I'm going to make myself a press pass. I'm going to work for the World Wide Portrait News Agency and I'm going to enlist (enoculate)each and every one of you by issuing a like pass.

[Steven Sweeney]

[D]oes not ... the parliamentary debate go on ... in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Edmund Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important than they all."

-- Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841)

You can quite easily become an ordained minister by submission of the requisite fees online or through the mail, and apparently the events over which you officiate are legally recognized. So, sure, start the press-pass presses, and crank 'em out. Put one on the dashboard of your vehicle -- maybe the parking meter attendant will swoon in the presence of a landed Fourth Estater, and forget to write you up. (More likely, he or she will hand you the citation and suggest that you drop it off on your editor's desk, and have a nice day.)

And all will probably be well until one appropriates the likeness of a non-public figure (or, without license, the rights in another, authorized depiction of that person) who is "newsworthy" only because it serves the publisher's commercial or self-interest that day, and who sees neither the honor nor the humor in the publicity or the laissez faire philosophy.

At which time the best advice is probably moot -- that one should have already made arrangements to be either rich beyond avarice, or sufficiently impecunious as to be judgment-proof.

It's not a question I've never thought about, because in my travels I've snapped a lot of photographs of people, without permission, many of which I intend to one day use in some way as reference materials. If it's a shot of a group of elderly men in a Beijing park, dressed in Mao-inspired fashion and poring over a mah-jhong game unfolding on the ground in their midst, I feel pretty "safe" in appropriating that scene, though it's hardly newsworthy. Other photos of, say, quite accomplished musical performers on Grafton Street in Dublin -- well, I'm a "wee bit" less secure in my certainty that I'm out of firing range. Photos taken in the U.S. are even more closely scrutinized.

A fallible but practical "test" might be to ask oneself, if the lens were turned around, and without one's permission, his image were commercially exploited merely for another's personal gain, would one take moral if not legal offense.

It's the sort of dilemma that Calvin would see in black in white, and Hobbes would paint in rich ambiguity.

[Steven Sweeney]

P.S. Please consider embedded microchips rather than inoculation. I'm just not a needle guy. I don't even let them squirt those dead flu mites into me at this time of year -- and I'm not too far away from being in an "at risk" group. Gives me the willies.

[Mike McCarty]

The reason for bringing this up I guess has more to do with my disgust for media practices than the practices of a few lowly painters, however, our practices do cross a bit in purpose. I'm sure the [media] is arguing in some venue every day that they are dutifully serving the public good, and not just gratuitously selling soap. Bolshevik, I say.

And all will probably be well until one appropriates the likeness of a non-public figure (or, without license, the rights in another, authorized depiction of that person) who is "newsworthy" only because it serves the publisher's commercial or self-interest that day, and who sees neither the honor nor the humor in the publicity or the laissez faire philosophy.

I really don't look to go around snatching peoples images without their permission. I always ask permission when I'm in those circumstances (except, as in your example of the old men in the park. But, one wonders if a class action suit couldn't be drawn up on behalf of all old men in all parks). I do bristle a bit at the notion of carrying around a legal document and whipping it out with ink pen. Sorta takes the smile off everyone's face. I always try and send the subject a copy of the image in an e-mail and then lock down their permission in that exchange of e-mails, thus having a written record.

I just can't understand why the media gets such a total pass for such egregious behavior such as I saw in New Orleans. The answer must be that the media can expose anyone, at any time, under any circumstances, and they alone are the arbiter of that individuals rights.

I don't know why I get these bees in my bonnet.

[Michele Rushworth]

I always try and send the subject a copy of the image in an e-mail and then lock down their permission in that exchange of e-mails, thus having a written record.

Nice idea!

[Steven Sweeney]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarty

I just can't understand why the media gets such a total pass for such egregious behavior such as I saw in New Orleans. The answer must be that the media can expose anyone, at any time, under any circumstances, and they alone are the arbiter of that individuals rights.

Sadly, it probably has more to do with the fact that they are well paid -- by us, the subscribers -- to keep doing it. Cut a newspaper's subscriptions by 50% overnight out of disgust, and it would stop. Cause an advertiser to fail to meet financial forecasts because of a boycott based on its support of garbage in the media, and changes would be made.

It isn't going to happen. Some of the greatest revenues being raked in today are generated by a show in which contestants drink pureed beetles and grubs and egg yolks, to see who can keep it down and thus "win." That's the industry that we're hoping will exercise good judgment and display good taste. It isn't going to happen. Not if Jerry Springer has anything to say about it.

I caught he*l just this past week for not being "up on" a recent legal development in New York that, another editor told me, had been "all over TV." Well, the fact is, I don't watch TV. Haven't for years. I can't stand it. Can't stand wading in the cesspool of ignorance and bad taste and bad writing. Most radio is just as odorous (and odious), full of hatemongering windbags and high-wire fraud acts that make "Off" the best channel selection (short of revolution, which we've become too lazy and compliant to even court.)

I agree that the year-round sweeps-week media mentality is degrading and bottom feeds off the most toxic holding ponds in our culture. It disgusts me every time I see a microphone or camera lens pushed in the face of a grieving or tormented or heartbroken soul. But we tune in. For every one of us who just turns them off and tunes them out, a thousand more sign up for satellite radio so they can mainline their Howard Stern fix first thing in the morning and check out of life.

That's the bee in my bonnet for the moment.

What more to do about it? Go ahead and paint those Chinese mah-jhong players, and what the heck, the Irish musicians, with all the dignity that they deserve. Avoid any caricature or false light or mean-spirited invasion of their lives. Hold the result up for comparison with the sinister and the base, and let those who still are capable of choosing, rather than merely being led like cattle, make their choice.

Disclaimer -- I did not mean by comparing them to Rivera or Stern or Springer fans to cast any aspersions on the good members of the cattle community, or any bovine named or unnamed.

[Mike McCarty]

I think you've summed it up Mr. Steven Sweeney.

You've exorcised the bees from my bonnet.

[Steven Sweeney]

While this thread was developing, I was constantly in mind of one of the iconic, Depression-era photographs that we