Fair Use and Insurance Providers

I was checking out the Berkman Center for Internet & Society website (aka Harvard’s Cyber Law website), and came across this article:

Insurer accepts fair use claims

Two years ago, the Center for Social Media published a “Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use.” The intent was to provide some guidelines regarding the ambiguous and onerous enforcement of Fair Use. Last week, National Union, a large errors and omissions insurer adopted this document for Fair Use claims when supported by an appropriate lawyer’s claims.

Since so many casual thieves of photography seem to claim “Fair Use” as a defense, I was happy to see that so much forward movement was being made on the issue. And even though the aforementioned document isn’t specific to photography, it does set a precedent. And as suspected, the abuse I mentioned in my last blog hardly meets the definition of Fair Use by said document.

About the author

Allen Murabayashi
Allen is Chairman and co-founder of PhotoShelter. He is a regular contributor to the PhotoShelter blog, and he flosses daily.

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