HI, Are there any legal issues that I need to be aware of when I review, comment on or critique a company or product, either in writing or in a video blog. I want to make sure what I do is considered fair use & legal. I suspect established news organizations are granted a bit more liberty with fair use than your average blogger. For example, I wrote a review of a new Sony Vaio laptop on my blog, I took a number of photos and showed them with the review. Some of the photos displayed the Vaio logo prominently, such as a image of the cover of the laptop. Is there any potential for any type of infringement /liability issue here for taking and displaying these photos? Another situation, what I take photos of some people at some newsworthy event, lets say I am blogging about my local farmers market. Normally if I was to use photos of people commercially, I would need to have a media release from all the people that are recognizable in the image. If the image is used in a news reporting capacity on a blog, would a media release be required? Last concern that comes to mind, if I want to review a program or website, if I take a screen capture or video the screen of the computer and display a web site in detail, including photos and logos of the site, for journalistic / reporting purposes, am I likely to run into any issues? For clarification, I am talking about using these images in conjunction with real articles that I write, such as a 500-1000+ word articles. Example on a written product review with photos I took: http://jamiedolan.com/2009/11/15/review-sony-vaio-laptop-vgn-nw240f-2/ or a video review for example: http://jamiedolan.com/2009/11/19/htc/ (These are not paid / affiliate reviews. I am not being compensated by any company in any way whatsoever.) Will it make any difference if I display ads on my blog, could that then be considered commercial for profit use of the site and limit the scope of fair use? Thanks very much, j
To tell you the truth I wouldn't even think about that, I am blogging for two years now and I have tons of pictures of logo's when I am writing about Sony I have there logo in the post on the right and I bash and rip on products I don't like. Never got any trouble
it doesn't seem like you're doing anything wrong. you should always check the policy of the product you are showing though just to be sure.
I'm not sure what I would even look for in a policy? I've never seen a policy that either permits nor forbids the media from reviewing the product. What kind of language would I want to look for from the company who makes the product? J