OBSERVATIONS

TECHNOLOGY

Who owns
your selfie?
Ian Steadman

amsungs PR team loves

it when celebrities take
selfies using the companys
newest smartphones. So when
the Boston Red Sox visited the
White House on 1 April and
the player David Ortiz snapped
a cheeky selfie with Barack
Obama, Samsungs US team
quickly retweeted the picture.
Now that decision could land
Samsung with a lawsuit.
Why? Because Barack
Obama is the president of the
United States of America and
neither he (nor his image) is
supposed to be used to endorse
a product. The White House
press secretary, Jay Carney,
denied that there was any
discussion of a ban on all selfies
with the president. But US
law gives everyone the right
to object to being featured

in an advertising campaign
without permission.
The problem is that these
laws were drawn up at a
time when the line between
personal photographs and
adverts was relatively clear and
defined. The federal Lanham
Act of 1946 gives consumers
a way to sue companies for
false advertising, or to protest
against unwittingly being used
in an advertising campaign.
The White House lawyers
could argue that Obama
wasnt knowingly endorsing
a Samsung phone when he
posed for the selfie.
Ortiz says that he didnt
intend for his snap to become
a viral marketing campaign,
but when the Samsung PR
team hit Retweet it may also
have created grounds for a case
against the Korean company.
Samsung could defend itself
by pointing out that the selfie
doesnt qualify as an advert
you cant see the brand of the
phone taking the picture, after
all and that in posing for a

selfie, you give your consent

for your image to be shared in
all kinds of unexpected ways.
We just dont have any legal
precedents for such a case.
The Ellen selfie taken at
the 2014 Oscars that one
of actors from the Academy
Awards in March was the
nadir of the medias obsession
with a pretty unremarkable
fad, but the most interesting
aspect of the picture was the
one that was most ignored:
who owned it? Youd think
that Ellen DeGeneres owned it,
as it was taken with her phone,
but Bradley Cooper pressed the
shutter button.
Its a well-established
precedent that its the person
who takes the picture who
owns the rights to it but it
was DeGeneres who gave
Associated Press permission to
republish the shot. She may not
have had the right to do so.
Alternatively, perhaps she
did have the right, in the way
that an artist retains authorship
rights over a piece of art even

if most of the manual labour

that went into making it
came from a studio assistant.
Such arrangements usually
need paperwork to be legally
formalised, however.
In this case, Samsung also
complicated matters, as it
has a big advertising deal with
the Academy. A representative
for Samsung responded after
the selfie went viral to deny
that DeGeneres was paid to
use a Samsung Galaxy Note to
take the picture although the
company was delighted to see
Ellen organically incorporate
the device into the selfie
moment that had everyone
talking as if those were
words a human being would
ever utter.
Again, as in so many issues
to do with Twitter, from death
threats to online plagiarism,
the legal system finds itself
one step behind in the internet
age. But if this episode leads
to the end of news stories
about selfies, would that be
such a bad thing? l

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18 | NEW STATESMAN | 11-17 APRIL 2014

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