legal

I feel like a broken record... yet again, I was perusing the Internet (this time, Twitter), and then I noticed an illustration—a very familiar one—of the Roman collar (the white collar worn by priests):

A great peace always came over me when I saw the Roman Collar, a rep of the high priest, Jesus Christ, was present pic.twitter.com/9qH5VghciI

— Chris Boutin (@Boutleg) June 15, 2014

@Boutleg didn't create the graphic; it looks like uCatholic originally posted the graphic on Facebook, where it was shared and reshared thousands of times, and liked (through that network of shares) many thousands of times.

As a Catholic who's worked in many different media fields (newspapers, photography, video production, and web development), I've seen a very wide array of copyright violations, improper media usage, and misuse of licensed assets. This seems to happen more in the non-profit world, where there is little or no budget for acquiring stock images, etc.

I'm extremely generous with my licensing for photos and other media I produce; typically, if someone asks to use a photo of mine, I'll send them a full-resolution JPEG and a license that allows them to use it for any non-profit cause.

However, what really gets under my skin is when I find my photos (especially) used in YouTube videos, for articles, and on posters, when I have never even been asked for permission, and when the photos clearly have 'All rights reserved' or some form of Creative Commons license.

The lifted photo.