Fox Paid $60k For Video Footage Of Madoff On A Yacht... And Still Gets Sued For Copyright Infringement

from the fair-use-anyone? dept

JJ sends in the news that Fox News apparently paid some guy $60,000 for some video footage he took of Bernie Madoff on a yacht in 2003 for use on Fox News and Fox Business, and the guy is now suing Fox for more. Specifically, the guy licensed the work for 45 days for $10,000. After that period ended and Fox was still using the video, the guy sent a cease & desist, and Fox paid him another $50,000 for a bit over another month. Once that ended, Fox was still using the video, and the guy sued, demanding at least another $500,000. First of all... $60,000 for the use of a single video of Bernie Madoff on a yacht for ~90 days of usage? Damn.

But, separate from that, I would think that, even though it licensed the video originally, Fox could make a decent fair use argument, claiming that the video was for reporting purposes. On top of that, the guy is demanding to know how much ad revenue Fox brought in from certain advertisers, as if the video alone drove the ad revenue. Still, it seems odd that Fox would license video for news purposes for a limited time only. Does anyone really think it's still possible to put video online for just a limited time?

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Is Printing Call Girl Photos Fair Use?

from the transformative-use dept

Last week, Mike noted the controversy over whether printing racy photos of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the prostitute at the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal, was fair use. He thought it was, and William Patry has an interesting post exploring one precedent that might support a fair use finding. He describes a 2000 case in which a Puerto Rican model's nude photographs were the subject of a copyright dispute. The model had been crowned Miss Puerto Rico Universe 1997, and some people thought that she had set a bad example by posing nude. Newspapers began printing the photos as part of their coverage of the dispute, and the holder of the copyright in that case sued the newspaper for copyright infringement. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in 2000 that the use of the photos were fair use because the photos were integral to the scandal the newspaper was reporting on, and that the use was "transformative" because the news-reporting function the newspaper was making of the photos was significantly different than the portfolio-building purposes for which the photos were originally taken. Patry suggests that similar reasoning might apply in this case. However, one of Patry's commenters points out an important consideration on the other side: in the Puerto Rico case, the photographs were at the center of the scandal. Pictures of Ms. Dupre are not central to the Eliot Spitzer scandal in a way that's remotely analogous. So it might be harder to make a fair use argument in this case. The key question, I think, is whether the judge felt that the photos were integral to the reporting of the story, or whether the story was just an excuse to increase circulation by printing some racy photos. That seems like a close call to me.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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