The “unrealistic” is what really got me. Like, noooo... this is incredibly realistic. Women are dealing with very similar shit right now worldwide.

Reading the book, I interpreted Offred’s definition of rape (and not-rape) more as a reflection of the culture she’s living in. Like... she doesn’t get to call what happens to her rape because it’s state-sponsored. It’s like her saying she used to have another name, but not telling the reader what it is (major…

Yes.

Oh, we’ll be getting some thought pieces about Nick and The Commander, I’m sure.

Yeah, that sounds weirdly made-up to me.

I watched with my husband, and at the end, I asked him what he thought and it did not go well. I can’t remember the exact words—all I remember is static?—but at one point he accused me of trying to “educate him” and said it felt “unrealistic.”

Thank you for sharing. That is an *excellent* recap.

You misunderstand work for hire a bit. Just because someone hires a photographer to do a shoot does not in and of itself make the photographs the result of work for hire. That would make so many things work for hire! It doesn’t work like that. Work for hire happens in two specific circumstances:

Well, no. In this case, KK is a newsworthy celebrity, so the waters are muddied. News doesn’t require the same kind of permissions (even celebrity news).

Sorrynotsorry, I’m not. This is wrong:

I always forget that most people don’t know about model releases. While a photographer automatically owns the rights to their images (cogent in this discussion of KK) that doesn’t mean they can use images of people commercially without consent under many circumstances. (You also can’t sell photos of many branded…

This is a great response and more thorough than mine, though I want to let you know that in the US you don’t have to worry about architects suing you (they don’t own their buildings usually, anyway). As long as you’re on public property, you’re cool. This is VERY different outside the US — the Eiffel Tower being the…

Not really. The photographer took the photo the way any other photographer would — he/she held the camera, framed the shot, reacted to the lighting — even if the purpose of the image is lowbrow commercial, it’s still an image that was created by a person who is a photographer.

Ditto. I can already tell I am going to get really riled by this comment section, lol.

The photographers are 100% in the right here. They made the image, not KK... she’s just in it. People who are in images don’t own them because they’re in them. There are issues of privacy and use that complicate the issue for sure, but copyright protects the creators (photographers, artists, writers, etc).

Had she agreed to the photograph or benefitted financially, I would understand. But if some rando takes my photograph on the street, they can copyright and benefit, and I have zero recourse?

I think that Mad Men’s use of Weber’s work as inspiration is a great example of the gray area of creative rights laws. Personally, as a professional artist (designer) I think that this is a true transference of concepts even though the inspiration is super obvious because style can’t be copywritten, and I don’t think…

I think this is probably the case. Her use of an image on Instagram is very different from a giant, crowd-funded mural. I also read somewhere that he was selling merchandise with the image on it, which makes the whole thing much worse for him.

Well, copyright protects not only existing profitability but future profitability. So even if this mural isn’t making anyone any money, it could make this artist (the thief) money going forward in the form of merchandise, etc. And more abstractly, it would have allowed him to gain notoriety as an artist, allowing him…

Kelly, I know you love romance novels so I am totally going to go out on a limb slash overstep my bounds as a lowly commenter and suggest you check out my best friend’s most recent romance novel: A Ballroom Temptation. I wrote about it on Groupthink, there are good reviews, too! http://groupthink.kinja.com/my-best-frie…