Navy SEALs Sue Associated Press Over Iraq Photos
 

Read the Article Here

GC Lawyers and future lawyers, does the Seals have a case?

"Jane Doe One, the lawsuit said, stored the photos on Smugmug.com, among a collection of personal photographs."

Whether the suit is valid or not, how dumb is it to put something like this on the internet?

This is a public medium.

Technically, it's not really certain what parts of the internet are actually (legally) public, at least as far as judicial review that I can find - for instance, can a site truly be 'personal'? Is it more like posting on your wall, or is it like posting on a billboard? This is 100% a gray-area case, as far as I can tell. The photos weren't obtained through any truly illegal manner, and even if they were, generally the courts have upheld the right to publish this sort of thing.

Now, the special-forces wrinkle is interesting, and certainly germane, but for an entirely different reason. I'm pretty sure this will be quite an interesting case to follow.

The point is that Ms. Doe put pictures which can allegedly cause all of these problems in a place where pretty much anyone who stumbles across the site can see them.

As I said, whether there is a legal question here or not, it was not a very bright thing to do.

The biggest issue I see with this is that the AP apparently distributed the photos without compensation - that appears to be clear. Whether or not they were in the public domain, isn't the wire supposed to pay for what it distributes?

Would that be the case if there were no copyright on the pictures themselves or the website where they were published?

When you post in a non-copyrighted area, does that give implied consent for use?

I don't know the answers, just raising the question.

Another question i have is that the AP was the distributor, not the publisher, the photos were published by the individual newspapers and broadcast by the individual TV stations which subscribe to that particular wire service. So who is actually responsible for the SEAL's faces being shown? The AP didn't force the individual papers to print the photos, so wouldn't the indivual papers be the ones who are on the line?

Newspapers and broadcasters subscribe to AP. It is considered to be a source that can be trusted to have done its due diligence in terms of rights, etc.

AP would be responsible, I think.

Really interesting case - I think the fact that these were Navy Seals is important, although this may be mitigated by the fact that the wife of said Navy Seal posted the pics on a public forum. I think that if we were talking about anyone other than a covert group, this wouldn't be much of an issue.

Would compensation still come into play with the public nature of the board? If a newspaper finds a photo on a public bulletin board, I'm not sure how compensation would work.

I tend to side with the newspapers more often than not, and in this case I see fault lying with the wife, not with the AP.

They screwed up and got cought. They are saying that it wasn't abuse, then they have nothing to sue about. At least it wouldn't make since for them too, better to spend less money on PR or something than long court costs. Also, which branch of the court system will try this case? Military Court? CA civil circit for municpiality of SD?

In the above post the term "military court" does not refer to court marshal. It refers the court that handels military affairs, hang on will look up the name of it.......U.S. court of military appeals, that's it.

I agree. My comment about AP's responsibility is in regard to AP vs. the newspaper/broadcast media.

My initial point still stands, I think, in that if you have something sensitive, it's stupid to put it on the internet.

Haven't the SEALs learn anything from the various fraternity incidents on the web? :)

They still haze, too.