When I heard that McCain has used royalty-free stock photography for the back-drops for his big speech, I initially wasn’t all that concerned. Believe me, in my job I spend alot of time perusing stock photography. It’s a lot easier than lugging around all the camera and lighting equipment needed to take professional looking photos, and a lot cheaper than hiring a professional photographer to do it for you. Plus you can get shots you otherwise wouldn’t have access too (after all, it would have been really hard for the GOP to find black folks at the convention to take pictures of, seeing as there were fewer there this year than there have EVER been in recorded history). How ever when I heard they came from iStockPhoto.com (of which I’m quite familiar), it occurred to me that there was a pretty serious TOS violation going on.
To quote from section 4a, Term 7 of the iStockPhoto license agreement:
[you may not:] use or display any Content that features a model or person in a manner that (i) would lead a reasonable person to think that such person uses or personally endorses any business, product, service, cause, association or other endeavour;
But I guess, what difference does a violation of the law make when you’ve got an election to win. You got to get your smiling, McCain-supporting African Americans, firefighters and soldiers from somewhere, right?
[...] incoming link caught my eye. Dolphins Dock has another bit to the stock photography used in the McCain bio video. Namely, the iStockPhoto [...]