Help Wanted: Image permissions

[RJN]

If anyone can get permission for APOD to use this image of today's shuttle launch:
http://twitpic.com/4yg4ur
that would be great! Here's what it looks like:

Click to view full size image

Beware that I don't think this is an easy thing to do. Thanks if anyone can help.

- RJN

[Beyond]

Hi RJN, if that's part of what a woman on a plane took, i don't think permission is needed. She put it on the internet and it went viral. I just read an article about it yesterday. The picture they showed of part of what she shot with her phone camera, the shuttle was higher and the vapor trail wasn't straight. I think i saw it in Yahoo news.
Heh, i just noticed your link and followed it and see what you mean. Everything but a way to contact her. I suppose that you could leave a comment in Word Press with a way to contact you and sooner or later she may see it and get back to you. OR, how about just linking to it? Or is that not a thing to do with an APOD picture of the day? In the article that i read, she also has some video of it.

[RJN]

i don't think permission is needed.

Thanks, Beyond, for your thoughts! I had some additional thoughts on this myself even before your reply post. I seems to me that this woman uploaded her content to TwitPic and therefore she owns copyright. There is some discussion on the web as to whether TwitPic owns copyright of most images posted to TwitPic, but I think that TwitPic has recently acknowledged that copyright reverts to the original image owner. Even though this image is all over the web and shown on many pages and blogs, I was reluctant to post it on APOD without the copyright owners permission. I guess the reason is that, as my mother said, just because others jump off a bridge doesn't mean that I should.

If there was a way to imbed the TwitPic image on an APOD page, like we do for YouTube and Vimeo, that might have worked. But I couldn't find a way to do that either.

The idea of posting a image permissions request as a comment on her blog is pretty good, but somehow it seemed intrusive. Also, I was hoping that if CBS could located her and get permission, it might not be that hard. But I was wrong (again)!

I am thinking of starting an "APOD Image Chasers" group of people who would subscribe to an original "APOD Image Chasers" post and then help out APOD by trying to get explicit permissions for cool images found around the web. That might have helped here. I do note that I received several helpful emails from people, which were good but it seemed that people were duplicating each others efforts, perhaps needlessly.

- RJN

[RJN]

MSNBC: That famous space shuttle photo: When is sharing stealing?

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011 ... g-stealing

Gordon's photo has been viewed nearly 1 million times, and shown by media TV, Web and print news outlets around the world. She was paid by precisely five news organizations.

- RJN

[bystander]

When you first posted, I tweeted her that you were interested, but never got a response.

[jessy27]

Rjn,
If she posted it on the net she gave up all intellectual rights to the pic. Killer photo
snapped for a phone though.

[owlice]

Rjn,
If she posted it on the net she gave up all intellectual rights to the pic. Killer photo
snapped for a phone though.

This is absolutely NOT true.