At least that’s the only thing a person can conclude from the stories at Copyfight earlier this week. This post reports on two stories where the photo services concluded that the photos to be printed were too good to have come from an average customer. Upon trying to order prints of her child, one Ofoto user found the following:
Your order has been cancelled because it appears your order contains one of the following… 1. Professional images.
And Wal Mart told another mother:
We can’t release the pictures to you without a copyright release form signed by the photographer.
At least Ofoto gave the mother the opportunity to sign an affidavit warranting that she was the photographer or had permission from the copyright owner. Wal Mart wouldn’t even accept that.
So, like I noted in the headline: Professionals apparently don’t use Ofoto or Wal Mart. I wonder if they promote that as a selling point…
Seltzer’s post notes the new copyright warning that Canon is putting in their camera manuals and the trouble{#157&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0} that the developers of the open-source Gallery image management software project found themselves in recently.