Photography And The Law

Photography is not only used as a personal hobby and passion, but also gives visual information of what’s going on in our world. As humans we have the seven senses all of them help us depict our reactions to a situation. For example you can read the Crucible and imagine the innocent girls hanging, but when you see a photograph from that time your emotion changes cause our mind shelters us from the painful truth at times. Photography does have it’s boundaries such as if you are in a public place and are photographed that’s not illegal as long as it on public property, but if your are in the privacy of your own home then it would be illegal for someone to photograph you without your permission. If photographs taken by an individual are taken by someone and turned into an art piece then its legal for them but if you put them on a shirt then it would become illegal because you’re soliciting the image for your profit.

In the case “The Lara Jade Coton” when a Laura a fourteen year old girl decided to take a self portrait of herself in front of a window while on vacation wearing a top hat. In 2007 a follower on her deviant art page sent her a message with a link that showed her image as the cover photo to a prono DVD called Body Magic. She later contacted a man named Hustler about the copy right of her image on their cover he responded to her saying they would stop selling the DVD until they would find a replacement photo. He then accused her scheming him because according to him the photo was under a public domain. She didn’t have the money to take her case to court so she turned to the Internet and expressed the problem over deviant art. When Allen Dell contacted her telling her how important this was to him and payee for the whole trial. They had won at first and he ordered many Cd’s to clarify that her image was no longer there. He opened one of the cases months later only to find Ms. Cotons photograph on the Cd itself instead of the cover another trial took place while Burge made long statements on the copyright laws but lost in the end once again.

Because the image had so much attention from the social media it has hurt her career as a young photographer because many clients don’t find it appetizing if the model was associated with porn especially important clients.  At the moment she is being put of hold for being sponsored by Cannon has put her on hold until they find out the resolution of the case.

                               

References: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/09/28/the-lara-jade-cotontvx-case-the-full-story/