Canadian psychopath Luka Magnotta is certainly getting his fifteen minutes. The link is to an article and photo which shows him holding the popular Canadian beer Labatt Blue.
The Labatt company is distressed, of course, to have its product associated with the likes of Magnotta and have threatened legal action to compel the Gazette to remove it.
I recognize that Canadian law may well differ from that in the USA or UK or wherever. Still, does Labatt have a leg to stand on? (I see what I did there :eek:)
I’m not sure a company can sue to have their product removed from a factual photograph. It’s not like Magnotta is trying to make money off the Lablatt brand. He’s just a consumer using their product. That’s kind of what Lablatt wants…people to use their products.
Is he one of the recent cohort of cannibals? I can only imagine the tag lines.
I don’t know Canadian law, but wouldn’t a successful action of this nature (note: “this nature” being tempered by info assumed through an Internet post) be wholly unworkable? Any published news photograph that contained trademarked or copyrighted images would be subject to scrutiny and retouching. I understand their consternation, but I hope their legal department is writing letters and whatnot not with the hope of actually prompting action but to generate a PR response.
It’s newsworthy, it’s fair use. (The paper got the picture from Facebook - that’s a different discussion…) There is no intent to malign by the paper. they are just reporting facts.
Suing a newspaper over something like this will probably create even more publicity you don’t want. Unless they deviously actually want the brand to be noticed… “when gay porn star [alleged] cannibals absolutely need to get that taste out of their mouth…they drink…” Maybe not.
I don’t know the relevant law here, but they may not actually hope to get the photo edited - and I really cannot imagine any way a court could compel a news outlet to edit a photo just to protect a brand. It is possible that Labatt hopes the paper will bow to the threat of legal costs, and it’s also possible they’re just making a threat for public relations purposes.
Psychopath. I don’t think using the word “alleged” adds any kind of legal protection either.
In the US, the first amendment trumps trademark law. This means that if something is being used in a news story, they have a right to do so. If you use a trademark in a piece of fiction, you’re in the clear (and will only get a letter – and nothing more – if you used it incorrectly: “The murderer took a kleenex to wipe up the blood” would get a complaint, while “The murderer used a Kleenex tissue to wipe up the blood” would not).
I sort of get what you’re saying here, but Fair Use and Facebook sourcing need to be part of the same discussion.
It’s pretty clear that, in the US at least, there would be no obligation on the part of the paper or the owner of the photograph to remove the beer bottle from a photograph used for news purposes. But it seems to me that any discussion of Fair Use here needs to actually look at where the image comes from, and the uses to which it’s being put. It seems to me that, if the person who took the photo hasn’t given permission for it to be used by the news agency, then the news outlet could well be violating the photographer’s copyright.
As this journalism professor notes, grabbing someone’s photo from Facebook for use in a for-profit media outlet doesn’t seem to adhere to the requirements for Fair Use in the US:
Also, about 18 months ago a court in New York’s Southern District ruled that a copyright infringement case could proceed against Agence France Presse for nicking pictures from a social media site (in this case, TwitPic) and using and selling them without the author’s permission. As Eric Goldman noted at the time:
So, according to Goldman, not only was AFP liable for taking and distributing the photos, but the media outlets who bought them from AFP, presumably in good faith, are also liable for claims made by the copyright owner.
I harp on about this because media outlets grabbing Facebook and other social media photos and using them, clearly without permission, has become incredibly common over the past decade, and i find it indicative of increasing laziness among journalists, as well as of a sensationalist approach. It is also part of a broader, ethically-dubious notion that just because something is on the internet, you can take it and do whatever you want with it. As the journalism professor, linked above, says:
It’s possible that there are other court decisions regarding the taking of online pictures by media outlets, but while there are aspects of Constitutional and Copyright law that give some particular protections to journalists and to news stories, as far as i’m aware a for-profit media outlet is not exempt from copyright law. I’m not a lawyer, though, and if i’m wrong about this, i’d be happy to be correct by someone who knows the law better.
TLDR version: i would argue that Labatt’s has no case here, but the person who actually took the photo might well have a case for having it removed and/or being compensated for its use.
The obligation is on the copyright holder to request a takedown or cease-and-desist. The photographer or Magnotto himself, depending on where the photo came from, has to make the request. Odds of him getting a lawyer to take a civil case in Montreal from a Berlin jail? Assuming he wants to stop publicity, given what we hear of his character…
Labatts can scream all they want, but it’s not their right to tell the newspaper to take down the photo, nor do they have standing to sue about that issue. As the business report said this afternoon, in the morning the photo was very difficult to find; by the time this made headlines across the country, ever major news outlet in Canada was reproducing the picture. The business reporter said it was a case of Labatts shooting themselves in the foot.
Never suggested otherwise. Doesn’t really change whether or not the copyright infringement occurred, though, and nor does it change the questionable journalistic ethics of taking someone else’s images for your own news story just because you can’t get a photo of your own.
I guess, if you like, you can look at copyright infringement in some sort of “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears…” philosophical sense, whereby violations only occur if the copyright holder finds out and takes legal action, but that strikes me as a pretty pointless exercise. I think this taking of images by the media is done precisely because they know that very few Facebook or other social media users are going to pursue the issue. It’s also incredibly hypocritical, given how much effort media companies themselves take to pursue people who infringe on their copyright.
Labatt has withdrawn their demand: CityNews
Maybe they consulted a better lawyer, or maybe they didn’t like the kind of publicity they were getting for being such idiots.
Meanwhile, over at Alexander Keith’s, executives are thrilled that the good people over at Labatt are in such a hurry to take the attention off the Child Molester’s Beer.
One suspects that the publicity Labatt has received about asking for the takedown is all that they wanted, and what they received. Anyone who cares hears that they are peeved enough to start talking lawyers, and that eventually they can’t stop it. That makes for a much better outcome than just disappearing the pic, or applying an obvious blur over the bottle’s image.
(I doubt applying an obvious blur would count as image tampering - so long as it is clear to the viewer that the blur is there to obscure, and did not form part of the original image.)
The usual leverage is to remind the paper/magazine about advertising contracts. If they don’t have any, well, not much leverage.
Kleenex is a trademarked brand name. That means nobody else can sell tissues and call them “Kleenex”. That doesn’t mean I can’t say “Pass me a kleenex”, or write a story where a character says “Pass me a kleenex”. The trademark doesn’t regulate how I am supposed to, or allowed to, use the word “kleenex” in everyday speech or news stories or books or movies.
Adobe has rules on its site for how its trademarked names should be used. Some examples include:
I recognize why Adobe puts up a page like this, but if they think i’m going to talk about how i “enhance my photographs using Adobe® Photoshop® software,” they are kidding themselves.