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This article by Noam Cohen describes the controversy over the use of public photos on flickr. Flickr is a website used to share images with family and friends, which is now being used by company's and site's selling images without the approval of their owners. One example was Virgin Mobile's use of a picture of Alison Chang, a 15 year old, in one of their campaigns without her knowledge. The picture was under the protection of a creative commons that allowed it to be used for commercial use, making this issue more about privacy than about copyright. Virgin Mobile responded that they were "promoting creative freedom and didn't do anything wrong."

All those words and phrases are on Lake Superior State University's annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

Issued: March 2009. Big companies are starting to crack down on copyright infringements. With over 15 lawsuits in 2007, the number of lawsuits targeted against blogs has started to rapidly rise. The author, Brian Stelter, is a writer for New York Times who's main focus is on television and the digital media. This article seems to be aimed at the big companies who the author believes are unfairly digging into to copyright laws. The article mentions a lot of disputes such as the ones between New York Times and Gate House Media, Silicon Alley Insider and The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and All Headlines News and others. Most of the websites getting sued were blogs or newspaper websites that quoted other people's works, assuming it would be okay under the "fair use" statute of copyright laws.

i went to the New York Times online to search the term, "copyright" to get an article relating to copyright issues or infringement. this article by Brian Stelter was published on March 1st, 2009. Stelter is a journalist for the New York Times. Stelter sides with the people who claim to be getting copyrighted. He bases the majority of his article against the bloggers and other online publishes "who seem to be on the rise." He also questions when excerpting from an article becomes illegal copying. Although he mostly sides with the people claiming to be copyrighted he also sheds light on those bloggers and online publishers whom give credit to those sites they excerpted information from. Statler keeps bringing up the issue of "excerpting to find value" in which online publishers combine articles to validate their thesis. In the end, Statler shows both sides of the story and doesn't leave out any information regarding the thoughts of both parties.

By BRIAN STELTER Published: March 1, 2009 Brian Stelter focuses on a quotation from the Silicon Alley Insider which quoted a quarter of Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal. "We thank Dow Jones in advance for allowing us to bring it to you." The editor added "in advance" because Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal, had not given the blog permission to use the column. With this particular instance of copyright infringement and others, Stetler brings light to the fact that permission isn't being given between different industries when taking direct quotations or titles from that industries publication. "Some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work - a practice sometimes called scraping - are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content." He also brings up the numerous lawsuits that arise because of copyright infringement.

Date issued: January 7, 2010. An article from Law Vibe. Written by C.C. at International Law News/Lawyer Lifestyle. The article was written about what in the writer's opinion were the top ten biggest copyright infringement lawsuits between 2000 and 2009. Cases such as "Napster shuts down", "Apple sues Pystar", and UMG and Viacom take on Veoh and Youtube" lead the article. A reoccurring theme in the business of copyright lawsuits seems to be illegal file sharing online. Many websites that provided options for illegally downloading music have been sued or shut down over the years, including Napster and Pirate Bay. Modeling agencies such as Perfect 10 sued Google over copyrighted pictures of their models showing up online, the courts however ruled this fair use and the case has since been closed. This article shows a brief history of how copyrighting has become a central legal issue over the past decade and how various companies and defendants have dealt with the cases presented to them.

Obesity as many of us know, is a growing problem in the United States. It is extremely prevalent among the younger generation, as kids are more susceptible to advertisements on television and on the Internet. As this article states, children have a great influence over the food their parents buy. To put it bluntly, children can be annoying. They can scream and yell, essentially embarrassing you into buying them whatever they want. Years ago, discipline amongst parents was much stricter and a child who mouthed off would be subject to corporal punishment. However, society has greatly evolved, and in many families, the power balance among children and adults has shifted. Fast food advertisers are aware of this and take full advantage by placing commercials during popular television networks like Disney channel and Nickelodeon. Also, as the Internet has become more popular amongst young adults, advertisements for sugary snacks and greasy fried food have also increased. Obesity will continue to be a big issue in the United States but we can no longer only place the blame on the lack of options in supermarkets or parents themselves but rather advertisements in media that are negatively influencing children causing them to make bad decisions.

"I can't afford to pay any amount. It's not a matter of won't, it's a matter of I can't." In Minnesota, this is the response that Jammie Thomas-Rasset made about paying 1.5 million dollars for the illegal sharing of music online. Each of the 24 songs that she illegally violated copyrights on is $62,500. Her defense is that she can't afford to pay that kind of money, especially since she is the mother of four children. Sharing over 1,700 songs on Kazaa, a file-sharing site, the Recording Industry of America, on numerous occasions, had tried to settle with the woman at $5,000. The stubborn Thomas-Rasset refused and was criticized for not taking responsibility for her actions. Due to all these problems, Jammie was taken on trial and was proven guilty. Jammie persistently denies her use of Kazaa and is willing to keep fighting. Many people are in the same position as Jammie, and as the saying goes, "Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time."

In July of 2010, Paul Ceglia sued the owner and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, saying that he was the rightful owner of 85% of Facebook. His said that he loaned Zuckerberg $1000 so that he could start the company Facebook. The reason that this is going to court is that there is debate over what website the money that Zuckerberg recieved was used to build. During that time, Zuckerberg also built a website about job advertising. Ceglia claims that his money went to both sites, while Zuckerberg says that it only went to the advertising website. This lawsuit shows that copyright laws extend far beyond direct copying of other peoples ideas and property. This is a case that emphasizes how difficult it can be determining the winner in cases like these.

A photograph that filled a billboard in Denver this week will not find its way onto billboards in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Issued on April 6, 2010 in San Francisco. This article was written by Miguel Helft in the New York Times. He is a well known author for the New York Times that covers Internet companies such as Google or Yahoo. This article discusses how photographers and other artists filed a lawsuit against google for the mass copying their work. The artists claimed that they were not adequately compensated by google for the use of their work. Google was given permission from the visual artists to scan their work onto the website, however the artists feel that this partnering program with Google turned out to be unfair. Google is now being sued for copyright infringement. This article is informative to all people because it shows that even largely popular websites like Google may not be as trustworthy as perceived.