From PDNONLINE.com:
{quote}
Photographer Takes on the Iron Man in Lawsuit
By Daryl Lang
A Los Angeles photographer claims the makers of movie Iron Man illegally used one of his photos in the summer blockbuster as part of a mock newspaper front page.
Freelance photographer Ronnie Adams, who shoots for the JFX paparazzi agency, filed a lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.
{snip}
According to the suit, Adams shot a series of photos from a parking structure with a view of the Iron Man set in May 2007. He shot several photos of the Iron Man costume seen through a chain-link fence.
Adams sent the photos to a Web site run by a friend, the movie news site IESB.net, where they appeared in a photo gallery with prominent watermarks. Adams believes that this is the only place the infringe photo was published prior to the infringement.
Paramount contacted the Web site the same day and asked that the photograph be removed. The movie studio eventually persuaded the site's hosting company to take the site offline for 16 hours, Adams's lawsuit says. Later, Parmount told the site operator it had erred in insisting the photo be taken down, and proposed compensation for the site's downtime, though no agreement was reached, according to the lawsuit.
A year later, the picture showed up on the front page of a newspaper used as a prop in the Iron Man movie and in a publicity photo.
{end quote}
{Full article, with link to compare the original photo and the shot from the film here}
The interesting thing here, if you notice, is that the studio tried to get the website to take down the pics, threatening legal action, but didn't offer to sue the guy who took the pics.
That's because they'd be laughed out of court if they did - because he had a perfect right to take those pics.
You can legally (with some very few restrictions - classified installations and materials and/or data, for instance) photograph anything you can see - even if you are trespassing at the time you do so.
That is, you can photograph anyone or anything that would not have a "reasonable expectation of privacy".
A lot of stores and other businesses - banks, malls, like that - will try to tell you that you can't take photos on their property/inside their business. Well, you can.
Of course, they can legally throw you out and tell you "Never dark on my door again", or, if you're trespassing, have you arrested. But if they don't throw you out, they can't legally stop you from taking pictures.
What they definitely can't legally do is to confiscate your camera/film/memory card - even the cops can't do that without a court order. That doesn't mean that they won't believe that they can - or that they won't try.
And, if you happen to have been dumb enough to have gotten caught taking pictures inside a Vegas casino, i'd advise giving up the film, no matter what your legal rights are - remember - a lot of the Security types in Vegas casinos very likely got their early training working as route men for Uncle Guido's Osteofractive Collection Agency, a wholly-owned subsidiary of MAFIACo, Inc.
You can find a printable summary of photographers' rights here; it's part of a page put together by an attorney who is interested in the issue.
My Trusted MOGs
How do the restrictions against taking one photo differ from those against taking 24 pictures a second?
Last year, I attended a performance of an outdoor and free-of-charge theatrical event. With my inexpensive Nikon, I captured footage of the curtain call. A Large Man with the organization insisted I erase the images from my camera.
Large Man had the right to eject me, right? but not the right to hold me until I deleted the images?
My Trusted MOGs
That gets a little tricky; you're recording a performance, which is different than taking still photos. Quite possibly, even though there was no ticket price, there was some form of stated rule as a condition of admittance.
Live shows often are preceded by an announcement that there is to be no photography, recording or filming - or it's printed on the tickets.
As to whether he could demand you delete the images, once you had shot them, maybe he could (given the circumstances, of which i know nothing) and maybe (probably) he had no legal right to.
BUT
OTOH, was the footage you's shot important enough to you that it would have been worth the hassle (and possible arrest for trespass if you were violating the terms of admission to argue about it?
There are times to stand on your rights, and times to quietly sit down and not draw attention to yourself...