I’m always surprised to see how some of my photos are used. I recently got a membership with Pixsy, which skims the Internet for potentially infringing photo usages, and then allows the user to go after infringing users to get them to pay for their usage. One photo that surprised me as a frequent candidate for infringements was this one from 2003:
This photo is from the Mill Mountain Park By Night photo set, and was one of 29 photos from that set. Most of the photos from that very old set lacked creativity in their composition and came off overall as uninspired, but the above photo was always a favorite of mine.
I have a feeling that the popularity of this infringement came about via the social media equivalent of “monkey see, monkey do”. One posted it, and then others followed. The caption was always, “He offered her the world. She said she just wanted _______.” That blank was then filled with whatever the place sold, like pizza, seafood, tacos, breakfast, etc. While I threw the DMCA book at every single one of these usages that I found, the fact that they all followed the same form made me think of Match Game. So I presented it to my “panel” on Facebook, and I got the following answers:
- The rights to this photo
- A ham sandwich
- His half
- To pee
- About tree fiddy
- E.T. phone home
Makes me wonder what the likes of Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Marcia Wallace, Richard Dawson, Betty White, and others would have said to this question. This question also sounds like something that we could work “Dumb Dora” into. Something along the lines of, “Dumb Dora is so dumb… (How dumb is she?) She’s so dumb, that when he offered her the world, she said she just wanted blank.” (You can hear this in Gene Rayburn‘s voice, can’t you?)
So how would you answer it? Leave a comment below with your best responses.