I was just reading a PDN Pulse post about San Francisco photographer Ken Light. Ken won a judgment in February against Al Gore’s cable TV network Current TV for unauthorized use of an image. But Current TV has appealed a small claims court award to Light of $500 plus $88 in court costs for unauthorized publication of a 1994 image of Texas death row inmate Cameron Todd Willingham.
Current TV downloaded the photograph off the New Yorker website and published Light’s portrait of Willingham on its website without permission, but is balking at paying up claiming news photographs are free to use under “fair use” which is not the case.
Al should know better. His wife Tipper was a news photographer for the Nashville Tennessean until he was elected to the Senate in 1976. Tipper definitely knows better. Tipper have a talk with your husband.
This is an inconvenient case. Pay up, Al.