Many creative professionals give up their rights to their professional portfolios when they sign employment contracts without realising it.
A developers’ guide to GPL
If you are looking for a clear developers' guide to GPL, Richard Brest has published a terrific guide to GPL with WordPress developers in mind.
Which contracts photographers should consider using
Which contracts your clients should sign A photographer asked a great question about contracts recently: I would like to redo my contracts. Would like to know what do you get clients to sign before a shoot? Disclaimer: This note is a fairly broad overview of many of the major themes you, as a photographer, should... Continue Reading →
No, you can’t unilaterally opt out of Facebook’s terms and keep using it
Facebook has updated its terms of service and data use policy recently and the changes have upset many people. I've started seeing more declarations of users' intention to opt-out of provisions of Facebook's terms and conditions. These sorts of declarations seem to be legally binding with their fairly legalistic language but they don't work except... Continue Reading →
No photos of Cape Town Stadium, please, it’s protected
You may have heard that photographers are not permitted to take photos of Cape Town Stadium. The issue came up at the 2014 Advertising and Marketing Law Conference and I asked IP attorney, Hugh Melamdowitz, about the ban. It turns out that copyright in the architectural drawings of the stadium were assigned to the City... Continue Reading →
4 tips for developers selling software
Say you’re a software developer and your customer wants to buy your app, do you know what you should be thinking about when selling software? Here are a few contract tips: Can you legally sell your app? Unless you have developed the code for the app from scratch and haven’t used any previous code of... Continue Reading →
What “public domain” really means
Have you ever caught yourself arguing that you can use some content you found on the Web because it is in the "public domain"? Don't feel silly if you have even though you likely misunderstood what the term "public domain" means as a legal term which is very relevant to content use.
Using Netflix in South Africa is illegal
South Africans continue to be frustrated by the paucity of legitimate and convenient TV and movie download or streaming options. At the moment DSTV and a limited South African iTunes store are the primary options. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be enough so more and more consumers are looking to popular video rental service, Netflix, for their entertainment needs. The problem is that Netflix content isn't legally available in South Africa and its likely for the same reason that the local iTunes store lacks TV and some movie content: licensing restrictions.
Wikipedia text, Creative Commons licenses and #HummingbirdGate
One of the concerns about Woolworths' hummingbird scatter cushions is that the retailer used text from a Wikipedia article about hummingbirds as a background to the hummingbird image which attracted most of the attention in the controversy which raged over the weekend.
