Almost everything gets pretty contentious in a divorce. That’s pretty much a universal truth. And now we can thank copyright for making things even more of a mess. Five years ago we wrote about a case involving a divorcing couple who fought over the thousands of photos that were amassed during two decades of marriage. As we noted at the time, it seemed a bit odd that no one brought up the copyright question during that fight. Well, now it’s come to that. Comedian/TV host Rosie O’Donnell is apparently going through a (yup) contentious divorce with her wife, Michelle Rounds, and it’s reached the point were Rounds is claiming copyright over a photo that O’Donnell posted to Instagram last week. Rounds, of course, says that she took the photo and thus holds the copyright. She even went so far as to file a takedown notice with Instagram — though as of writing this, the photo is still up on the site.
This, of course, is not what copyright law is supposed to be used for — but since so many people now see it as a sort of universal “censor this now” button, that’s how it’s being used. It would be insane for this to actually result in a lawsuit, but if it did, I would imagine that O’Donnell would have a decent set of defenses, from an implied license to fair use and more. But, really, that’s besides the point. It’s becoming fairly ridiculous how frequently people seek to use copyright law to just block things because they don’t like it, not because of anything having to do with “promoting the progress.” This is just the latest example — which (once again) highlights the sheer insanity of automatically applying copyright to every work upon creation.
Tag: Instagram
Histagram History Viewer
About this project
We want to create an app that lets you view anyone’s Instagram and other social media like history. We will sell it for 99 cents.There’s already an app that lets you view anyone’s Instagram and it’s called Instagram and it’s free
Lawmaker Who Said Snowden Committed Treason, Now On The Other Side Of Metadata Surveillance
Rep. Aaron Schock is frequently referred to as a “rising star” in Congress, but this week, the Associated Press reported on a scandal involving Schock and his use of taxpayer and campaign funds for things like flights on private jets (owned by key donors) and a Katy Perry concert. Frankly, I think some of the “scandal” here is a bit overblown. But what struck me is part of how the AP tracked these details about Schock down:
The AP tracked Schock’s reliance on the aircraft partly through the congressman’s penchant for uploading pictures and videos of himself to his Instagram account. The AP extracted location data associated with each image then correlated it with flight records showing airport stopovers and expenses later billed for air travel against Schock’s office and campaign records.
In short, the metadata brought Schock down. Of course, as we’ve been describing, anyone who says that we shouldn’t be concerned about the NSA’s surveillance of metadata, or brushes it away as “just metadata,” doesn’t understand how powerful metadata can be. As former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden has said, the government kills people based on metadata.
But it does seem noteworthy that Schock was one of those who claimed that Ed Snowden’s leaking of how the NSA collected metadata on nearly everyone amounted to treason. I wonder if he still feels that way…