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May 26, 2017
In the past decade many new problems have risen including the altering of images. It has happened in newspapers, magazines, on social media it has generated everywhere. What most people want to know is what happens when it is discovered that an organization or single party is caught altering an image.
Every year several of companies lose millions in lawsuits for misconduct in advertisements, press, and everyday production of products. When images are altered and edited to the point they are no longer real or factual infringement and invasion of privacy apply. What most people don’t know is you could be sued and pay heavy fines for committing infringement or any form of copyright.
“Images have been altered and edited dating back to 1800’s but for the past 2 centuries you needed a professional to edit images. With resources today it makes it easy for all people to alter images.” explained Brad Cornell the owner of local photography business Countryside Photography. Brad explained most of the work he does is altering faces and eyes in pictures(eyes closed, not smiling). “The most advanced editing I do is when a team member is gone I will add them into the photo.”
Photography has exploded as a profession because of the huge innovations in technology in the past decade. We have an elective photography course.Sami Chang describes the class. ” Our teacher Mrs. Nisci emphasises how important it is to know how to edit and alter several aspects of photos; including color, shape, size, depth of field, closeness, and shade,” they said.
There is another side to altering photos that is in a negative manner. The two labels for the way people alter images is invasion of privacy & copyright infringement. This also ties with press law and is very similar in a legal aspect.
Invasion of Privacy will never be prosecuted by the government but is a viable reason to file a lawsuit. When someone alters an image in a negative and becoming way that could possibly harm a person’s reputation; this person then has the right to sue.
Copyright infringement is the more popular of the two. It is rarely prosecuted by the government, when they do it the copyright is usually committed against the government. In most cases it’s businesses suing other businesses or a single party. Copyright infringement is just like copyright regarding someone’s ownership over inventions extc; but it’s regarding photos. People can also be sued for infringement by producing,selling, distributing,and displaying the copyright material. Experts say it occurs more than any other form of copyright. Studies from Purdue University show that the average amount reprehended from copyright infringement lawsuits is 150,000-200,000$. Although It isn’t very common for everyday people to be caught up in these lawsuits it’s mainly big business.”I’ve never heard of anyone I know or even anyone on tv who has been charged with infringement or copyright,” says Sami Chang.
For the Stillwater Gazette Jeff Andres is the General Manager of the newspaper. A part of his job is legal notices. If anyone were to commit copyright against the paper he would be the one to decide whether to sue or not and determine whether it will impact the newspaper financially in a negative or positive way. Jeff Andres explains how little of an issue copyright infringement is for his company.”Very rarely has the Gazette had to deal with any forms of copyright from our paper maybe a few times in the past couple of years.”
Connor Cole
Hour 5
https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/penalties.html
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/copyright-infringement-penalties.html
http://www.ppa.com/content.cfm?ItemNumber=1720
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infringement
