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October 7, 2006
An Issue with HUGE Implications for Photographers
Shampoo eBay seller threatened by manufacturer for photographing productMark Frauenfelder:Jamie Olson from California bought some Aquage shampoo, made by SalonQuest, and offered it for sale on eBay. Her eBay listing included her own photos of the product.
Soon after, a private investigator hired by SalonQuest, emailed Olson, demanding the she stop selling the shampoo.
Of course, the reason SalonQuest is going after Olson isn't because they don't want her to take photos of the shampoo bottles. It's because they want to control the secondary sales market, and they are trying to use copyright law as an excuse.You are displaying copyrighted Aquage containers in your advertisements," which, according to the private investigator, is a "violation of SalonQuest's legal rights under the federal Copyright Act.
Olson, however, refused to cancel her sales in response to Aquage's threatening email. This week, she got a second email from the company's private investigator:
"On September 7, 2006, this office contacted you on behalf of SalonQuest concerning your unauthorized sales of Aquage products on eBay. Despite being formally notified that you are violating SalonQuest's legal rights, you have continued to list additional Aquage products on eBay. Also, you have continued to display copyrighted Aquage containers in your advertisements, yet another violation of SalonQuest's legal rights under the federal Copyright Act.
"SalonQuest would prefer to resolve this issue amicably. However, unless you immediately and permanently discontinue your sales of Aquage products on eBay and through any other unauthorized channels, SalonQuest has authorized us to forward this matter and your file to its legal counsel for further action.
It argues that it has contracts with its distributors limiting resale of products only to licensed vendors. Therefore, it claims that reselling its products is a breach of its contracts. But Olson never entered into a contract with Aquage. She just bought the shampoo at a store and is now trying to resell it. Aquage's contracts with its distributors doesn't give it the power to control the entire secondary market for its products.For now, Olson isn't backing down. Here's her latest eBay auction for Aquage stuff.Link (Thanks, Greg!)
[Lana Lawrence writes: This issue is having a major impact on a photo project that I was going to begin some months ago -- it is a documentary series of sorts and the likelihood of capturing the issues with a common household product is very high. I have no fear of moving forward with the project, but some sponsors are very nervious given the legal climate....]
Posted by Lana at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 2, 2006
All Women Team takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize!
All Women Team Takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize
Yahoo opened its corporate headquarters to hordes of hackers, press and others on Friday and Saturday for its open Hack Day. After 24 hours of hacking (with a break for a private Beck concert in the Yahoo courtyard the first evening), 54 projects were demo’d to the crowd of about 400 people. Over 3,000 pictures from the event (tagged “HackDay06″) are on Flickr here.
A handful of teams were awarded prizes in categories ranging from “Too Useful” and “Best Schtick” to “Overall Winner”. The overall winner, determined by a quick huddle of judges after the demos (David Filo, Jeff Weiner, Ash Patel, Bradley Horowitz, Chad Dickerson, David Hornik, Peter Fenton, Gina Trapani, Salim Ismail and me) was a hardware/software combination device stashed inside a woman’s handbag.
The winning project, called Blogging In Motion, combined a camera, a handbag, a pedometer and the Flickr API to create a device that takes a picture after every few steps and then automatically blogs those pictures. The device was created by Diana Eng, Emily Albinski and Audrey Roy, pictured to the right along with the device.
The other 53 projects weren’t bad, either. And I had a wonderful time emcee’ing the event. Something special happened at Yahoo this week, and I was very lucky to be part of it. Thank you to Yahoo, and especially Chad Dickerson (head of Yahoo Developer Network) and Bradley Horowitz (VP Product Strategy at Yahoo) for organizing this and inviting me to participate. This needs to become a regular event.
Our previous coverage of Hack Day is here and here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Posted by Lana at 5:07 PM | Comments (0)