May 15, 2010

Hey! Business Insider used my picture without attribution!

Look here! Scroll down. 

See?




That is a picture of me working on my last law school exam. I've blogged about it before. My son John scanned it and uploaded it on his Flickr site here.

Studying for last law school exam

It has a Creative Commons license, reserving some rights, and there should be attribution to the photographer, Richard Lawrence Cohen, who was, back then, my husband.

That's not the first time I've seen the picture used like that. It's interesting to me that people see it as a generic hard-working student, since of course I see myself as completely specific. I had a Federal Courts exam to write, and I had a newborn baby a few feet away in our studio apartment. That baby, John, is now 29 years old.

67 comments:

Ron said...

Sure that's not Diane Keaton, Double A? ;)

Unknown said...

dang. i'd be so pissed if some pic of me showed up on some random website.

i'll have to make sure none of my friends are uploading pics to flickr or any other of these sorts of photo sharing websites ...

chuck b. said...

This is probably the most often blogged picture of you. I think it's appeared in a blog post at least three or four times.

Have you ever explained what's going on with your hair?

The Crack Emcee said...

One more time:

If he were your "husband", he'd still be your husband.

Ann Althouse said...

It's like I'm clipart,

reader_iam said...

It's interesting to me that people see it as a generic hard-working student, since of course I see myself as completely specific.

Some day, we'll all understand.

Ron said...

Maybe you need a logo...for the Althouse "brand."

reader_iam said...

By the way, I've never gotten the Diane Keaton reference, which has only on occasion been brought up here. The hair of Diane Keaton and of Ann Althouse is not at all the same, and most particularly were they not the same way back when. Not even close. For crying out loud: Look at this very picture, for pete's sake!! Then Google if ya hafta.

Sheesh.

wv: eurfixi

Well, sometimes it's needed.

rcocean said...

Evertyime I see that picture I think:

You look better as a blond.

Freeman Hunt said...

I always wonder about the people in clipart. Who are they? What do they do? Do they really dress like that or was that a costume? Actors? Models? Just better than average looking office workers who were available for snapshots? Etc.

chickelit said...

The related story is about bailing out teacher's unions.

What makes you sure they've cast you as a generic student this time?

Maybe they've typecast you as a harried schoolmarm.

Ron said...

Sheesh, reader, Keaton in First Wives Club looks pretty close to this pic, hair color, glasses...not perfect no, but in the ballpark.

reader_iam said...

For the record, I think that Animal Logic song to which I linked is, in verse and performance, complete crap.

I wouldn't say either about Ann, for example.

Ron said...

Maybe there should be a contest for Mr. and Mrs. Clipart.

Who is most "Clipartish?"

Scott said...

The Creative Commons scam is designed to seduce people into weakening, or even giving up, their right to control their intellectual property. It benefits content users at the expense of content producers; whose rights would be stronger if there was no Creative Commons license associated with it.

Wince said...

Beautiful French news anchor Melissa Theuriau is probably the most misappropriated image currently in web advertising.

You'll recall the ubiquitous ads once you see her.

The good news, guys, she ain't shy about going topless on the beach!

reader_iam said...

Sheesh, reader, Keaton in First Wives Club looks pretty close to this pic, hair color, glasses...not perfect no, but in the ballpark.

No, Ron, she doesn't. I'd go even further to say: not at all.

***

With regard to the hair thing, specifically, I think there's backwards projection here. Ron, had you said that Althouse NOW has hair resembling Keaton's THEN, I'd be with you on that. However, apples-to-apples speaking: No way.

As it is, stop conflating (and confusing)!

wv: dryper

[a dry diaper

in the sense of what you get when you stop projecting

; )

]

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It's interesting to me that people see it as a generic hard-working student, since of course I see myself as completely specific.

There is a river two blocks from where I live here..

I go and dip my fingers in the current and feel the current and something wonderful starts happening.

I can almost feel my frame of mind change. I'm not doing it justice by describing it.

Its also funny that I remember this sensation from when I was very young.. and the idea that I can still feel those good feelings makes me think that its good to be alive.

I know it sounds corny but I have no other way of saying it.. and I wanted to share this before I forget.

reader_iam said...

Also, now that I think about it--Good Lord! Is it supposed to be a compliment, that you're comparing Althouse to Keaton in the "First Wives Club"?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

When I had my fingers in the current, I seem to remember as in a flash, very quickly there and just as fast it was gone, that I think I used to have the ability to will my mood.. I have no memory of this.. again this was just a like flash I had.

Also while the current was doing its thing I remember,.. its was not a recollection., I used to be able to will this also.

reader_iam said...

Lem: You're not alone, and it's not corny. It's just that you'll have to make a choice:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

to envision an infinitesimally thin corporeal body and at the very same time envision the same corporeal body as fat and as wide as its opposite and start to do it over again but quicker and more vividly. switching so fast that the idea seem to be to get both to happen simultaneously.

I had forgotten all about this..

Now I'm looking forward to see if it happens again. even thought I know its not something that i can summon at will.. not now.

I also remember been able to do this while half awake and half asleep.. again I was in my teens.

Ron said...

sigh.

Here's where I get the compare pic from: (middle of the page)

http://www.bobworld.me.uk/films_t.htm

Disagree if you like...I call 'em as I see 'em. With a minimum of fuss I'm sure there are more.

Doc Merlin said...

Make a big deal about it, call them and ask to talk to their lawyers.

reader_iam said...

sigh.

Here's where I say it's all opinion and of course we don't have to agree.

Penny said...

"Make a big deal about it, call them and ask to talk to their lawyers."

Wouldn't it make more sense for Althouse to send snail mail with her degrees more evident...right up there on the letterhead?

I mean, it's PAPER! Surely that would have more heft than a mere "voice on the phone"?

Paddy O said...

Lem, I totally get what you're saying.

And I think I need a river a lot more close by.

Ron said...

Reader, I feel this is just a sad failure of blogging or maybe the Interweb itself. If we were face-to-face, I'm positive we'd work this out in 5 minutes, and then maybe have some coffee or a beer! It'd be much easier to explain our positions, look at the other person like they were crazy, and go on with life quite happy....

but this dern Interweb makes us go dosey-do through comment sections that can't convey what a glance between us might in an instant!

Besides, if pressed, I still stick to 'Althouse as Joan Blondell' first... :0

reader_iam said...

Ron, I wish we got along better and understood each other better, and not just especially given our mutual acquaintances who appear to like us both. But there it is: reality. It seems we are not destined to get each other. I'm sorry I was attracted to a comment of yours tonight, and I'm sorry engaged it and how I engaged it. I will do my best not to indulge, or indulge in, any of that again.
***
And so it goes.

: (

Penny said...

OBTW, that is one fugly picture.

SO fuckin' ugly, it damages Althouse's finely PRUNED reputation!

reader_iam said...

Oh, crap. Cross-posting is a bear. Sigh. :,,

traditionalguy said...

That Althouse pic has that ever so hard to find innocent and hard working woman combination look. But don't worry, we know you better than that, and you are very hard working.

Penny said...

Reader is my idol.

Reader's just... straight up!

In a roundabout way sort of? Like Bill Clinton, if you get my drift.

Well not really like Clinton, because he had too many angles going for him which might not have served him well if anyone had a picture of "that".

I mean, who needs a bent dick when a picture would do quite well. That way we could wonder if it was photoshopped or just passed along like Althouse's fugly pic.

Face it. No one likes to get screwed.

Penny said...

Oh geez.

Didn't mean that exactly the way it sounded.

NOW what do I do?

reader_iam said...

Penny: I think you do nothing. I think you just let it hang out there. What the hell else can you do, after all?

Thanks, Penny, sincerely, for the laugh, and more: I needed that perspective--that tweak.

Good night, everyone. Sleep well.

Penny said...

"Hang out there."

SEE! This is precisely why reader just resonates with those of us who hang here.

Straight up. Tell it like it is.

chickelit said...

Penny wrote: OBTW, that is one fugly picture.

Of Althouse? Are you serious?

How do you hang Penny? :)

Fugly's such an ugly word. Can we please just reserve that word for Henry Waxman?

(speaking as one who has loved and adored women based only on what they write and think)

Penny said...

"(speaking as one who has loved and adored women based only on what they write and think)"

Chicklit? You are either full of fugly chit OR tg.

Traditional guy can get away with quite a bit of the fugly though, so?

Have at your shape-shifting, you little clucker. lol

rhhardin said...

Michele Boldrin on why intellectual property is a bad idea.

themightypuck said...

I think that is a pretty cute pic and I think Prof. A. kinda sorta agrees since she has focused attention onto it.

themightypuck said...

I'm very much in tune with Levin and Boldrin and in keeping with my Nabokov motif, it must be recalled that N. stole the Lolita idea from some French writer.

Jason (the commenter) said...

It has a Creative Commons license, reserving some rights, and there should be attribution to the photographer, Richard Lawrence Cohen, who was, back then, my husband.

Perhaps your son or ex decided to make some money and sold the rights to a clip-art studio.

Unknown said...

The way you write it, it sounds as if your son crawled out of the crib to upload the pic.

In any case, you have a rather world-weary look; put you in a dusting cap, change your frames to wire and the t-shirt to a dress and I can almost hear it, "How does, 'When, in the course of human events, ...', sound, Mr Jefferson?".

Ann Althouse said...

It's like I'm clipart,

In the future, everyone will be clipart for 15 minutes.

traditionalguy said...

I was remembering back on the older, super successful real estate agents who ran full page ads of listings. Their photo in their ad always looked about 27 years younger. They were great personalities and highly intelligent professional ladies in person, but they still wanted to show off a former youthful bloom in their published ads. Thank God for beautiful women of all ages.

Jason (the commenter) said...

Freeman Hunt: I always wonder about the people in clipart.

Well now you know. And now Althouse can bill herself as a model.

(Tyra had better watch her back, she has the Twiggy of clip-art to deal with!)

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I didn't know you had a kid.

So, that's where the dose of realism came from.

Opus One Media said...

I own part interest in the poem "Footprints in the Sand"..commercial interests that is. We have 300 or so people now who are making product for sale using the poem without authorization.

Welcome to the electronic "hey I can do whatever" age.

AllenS said...

Can anyone just travel about, taking pictures, posting those pictures on their web-site without authorization from the people who were photographed? How does that work?

Omaha1 said...

I hope you don't think I'm a stalker but I love looking at your old family photos. When I went to visit my mom & dad at Christmas time last year I spent several hours scanning old pictures and uploading them here (uh-oh, there goes my somewhat flimsy anonymity).

My favorite old picture of you is this one. You look like a typical exhausted new mother. It's hard enough caring for a newborn without also studying for law exams!

wv: deranted - deleted my latest Andrew Sullivan blog post?

Anonymous said...

Not pertinent to this subject, but:

You said in another posting that you didn't care for porn because you didn't want to watch poor quality video.

So my question: Will you watch porn with me if I guarantee that the video is of the highest quality?

word verification, I swear to God: outrabed.

I'd definitely thinking about outra bed. How outra can you get?

James said...

AllenS wrote:
Can anyone just travel about, taking pictures, posting those pictures on their web-site without authorization from the people who were photographed? How does that work?

The short answer is yes. The only time "authorization" is required is when the image is used for commercial purposes. Then you'd need a model release.

veni vidi vici said...

Nice photo. Very 80's college. Reminds me of my oldest brother, who graduated med school in 87 when I graduated high school. My parents were torn which ceremony to attend (same weekend, 100's of miles apart), and I told them to go to his, since med school comes but once and I'd have many more graduations to attend.

So my folks got undergrad, law school and biz school from me after that. And my oldest brother, mensch that he is, brought his kids down to my law school graduation and attended with my parents... he even wore one of my ties!

Big Mike said...

29 years later and the picture is still circulating as if it was taken the day before yesterday. Makes me wonder whether some day 29 years from now a teenage boy is going to show his mother a still clipped from a "Girls Gone Wild" video and ask "Mom, is that really you"?

Glad I had only sons.

Pixels are forever!!!

AllenS said...

Thank you, James. Now the question is this: what constitutes commercial purposes. While this blog probably doesn't pay for itself, I've hit the Paypal button, and I've contributed more than once.

Fred4Pres said...

There is some Sarah Palin there.

Mumpsimus said...

Is that a fountain pen? Sure looks like one.

Tres retro.

James said...

Thank you, James. Now the question is this: what constitutes commercial purposes. While this blog probably doesn't pay for itself, I've hit the Paypal button, and I've contributed more than once.

Offering a photo for sale; or using said photo to promote another product for sale is considered commercial use. I don't recall ever seen a photo posted here offered for sale.

Carolyn E. Wright aka The Photo Attorney has lots of information on her blog: When You Definitely Need A Model Release

"In general, when people are in public, you may photograph them. The use of the photographs can be restricted due to certain privacy rights. See my September 14, 2005, blog for a summary of the different privacy rights."

Be said...

There was some Yuppie Fair in Somerville, MA between 5-10 years ago where some random a$$ was selling my guy's photography that I uploaded to Flickr with the standard "creative commons" license as his own.

We dealt with it through physical intervention/intimidation.

Ann Althouse said...

Mumpsimus said..."Is that a fountain pen? Sure looks like one. Tres retro."

Yes. And it was retro even in 1981. It was my beloved Pelikan pen, which I used with permanent black ink, and I think it helped me get good grades, both because the ink flowed in such a smooth, pleasing way and because the handwriting came out really dark and clear and readable.

David said...

"I had a Federal Courts exam to write, and I had a newborn baby a few feet away in our studio apartment."

Perhaps we have found the base cause of Althouse's impatience with whiners and excuse makers.

David said...

Can you withdraw a "creative commons" license?

Anonymous said...
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Roger von Oech said...

In a similar way, I've seen this particular image of my FOOL [used on the Creative Whack Pack] taken and used in other places.

http://j.mp/98LuJO

Kev said...

I don't know if we were better writers of music or words for our fountain pens, but it felt more sensual, gently pushing those softly hissing black lines out onto the crisp, nearly white blankness.

I had a lot of friends in college who put themselves through school as copyists. We had four semesters of big band arranging alone, and a lot of the arranging students didn't want to mess with writing everything out themselves, so they learned rather quickly who they could hire to do it for them. The copyists all had the special pens that you describe, along with an ability that, IMHO, rivals calligraphy.

Fortunately, as software like Finale and Sibelius became prominent, a lot of the onetime calligraphers learned to use it so that they could continue their side job. (I use software as much as I can so as to spare the members of my ensembles from having to reach my own chicken-scratch manuscript.)

wv: fowles--speaking of chickens...

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