AFP v Morel looks like being a fascinating case. As Duckrabbit says:

So what argument are the photo agencies presenting in court which gives them the ‘right’ to continue to distribute and profit from these photographs without the photographers consent?

They presented two in court:

1. The terms and condition of Twitter (yes I know the photos were published on TWITPIC and so did the judge) allow photo agencies a license to take and profit from the photos.
2. That unless photographs have copyright embedded into them in written form then agencies have the right to distribute those photos for profit.

The first point is clearly nonsense, because Twitter doesn’t host photos.  AFP argued that Twitter’s terms and conditions were applicable to TWITPIC because of the way the two sites are linked.  It’s pretty obvious from the transcript that the judge was having none of it. It’s the second point that matters.

What AFP are arguing is that any picture on the web that doesn’t have the name of the photographer actually on the photograph is fair game for them to take and sell. The irony is that if this was true there would be nothing to stop me from stealing the photographs off  Reportage By Getty Images (the photos are niether watermarked, nor have the name of the photographer printed on the image) and then selling them on.

Hey, it’s my blog and I’ll make a bad pun if I feel like it!