If you have been reading this blog for the past few weeks, then you will know that a large festival called the Hessentag starts tomorrow in my home town of Oberursel.

This means that for the next 10 days, the streets will be closed to traffic in the town centre and we expect traffic to be queued up on the main roads that lead in and out of the town.

So although I have a permit that allows me to move around parts of the town with my car, I still have to take a large detour to get to others and do not yet know how well I will be able to get anywhere else, meaning that I have restricted my IT consulting appointments to those I can do by foot or by train, or remotely. (more…)

If you have read my last few posts about the problems of blogging in Germany, then you will probably not be surprised to learn that making a video or an audio podcast to put online is not easy.

Let’s start with the easy part: filming something and then publishing the film, is basically no different to the situation with a photo.

But with audio, things get even more complicated.  As you might imagine, you cannot just record something and then use it.  If I record an interview for a podcast then I either get written permission to use the recording, or – if the interview is conducted by telephone – ask the interviewee to confirm their agreement once the “record” button has been pressed. (more…)

I often see blogs from other countries that contain photos that appear to have been taken in public spaces and then used to illustrate new posts, and I am sure that many of those authors don’t give a second thought to using them.

And yet using such photos on German blogs can lead to all sorts of complicated issues, which fall under a variety of categories.  However the phrase use are most likely to hear is the “Recht am eigenen Bild” – the right to one’s own image.

There are situations that are probably just obvious.  Using someone else’s photo without asking would infringe on their copyright, something that most people understand.  But these days people are more “up” on what copyright is and defend it accordingly. (more…)