Of course, unprotected viewing of the radiant newborn could cause serious optometric and/or psychological damage. Those who insist on gazing at the child are advised to (1) View the People pictures from a distance, through a pinhole poked in a Mr. & Mrs. Smith DVD cover (2) Hold the magazine up to a mirror. Look at the reflected images. (3) Or behold Shiloh Nouvel only through a filter of uglier, less-famous babies.

On a more serious note, CBS News reprots that People magazine may have lost their chance to profit from the pictures as handsomely as they had hoped:

A purported picture of Hollywood's million dollar baby, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, has surfaced on the Internet. A "community blog" called culturekitchen.com posted a Hello! magazine cover with a shot of Brad and Angelina cuddling their bundle of joy. BBCNews.com reported on Wednesday that Hello! magazine is taking legal action to stop Web sites from leaking the photo. The photo "has been obtained totally illegally," the magazine's features editor, Juliette Herd, told BBCNews.com. According to BBCNews.com, both Hello! and Getty say they will seek damages from any Internet sites that reproduce the picture. People magazine reportedly paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights to baby pictures.

Hello! Magazine thinks they can sue people to prevent websites from leaking the photo? Umm, Helloooo, that's not going to happen. Culture Kitchen is already running the photo, which I am also reprinting here:

Here's culturekitchen's first take on the matter:

Lawyers can be the scourge of democracy these days. You'd think the automatrons at People Magazine would have thought about all the digital details involving the publishing online of Brangelina's baby photo. No they obviously did not think of the little detail of time zones when paying for an "exclusive".

After some reflection, they came back with this is an update:

The principles of fair use of copyright are far too important to fight for and I don't care if it involves a Brangelina photo. ... Now, there are a zillion miles of legal gray areas involving digital restrictions management. And I have said, I am not a copyright scholar. The point that ought not be lost with this Brangelina photo is that People.com is missing a golden opportunity here. If they had smarter lawyers and marketing people, they would use the image to get more publicity for their magazine and turn it into a collectible. But, you know what, not only are they not smarter, they're lazy. There are so many projects that have benefitted from "leaked" photos. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, comes to mind. Peter Jackson's companies had an amazing synergy with the OneRing.net. And guess what? His fans loved him for it. I hear they made his movies a billion dollar plus franchise. Gotta loves the internets. People Magazine needs to chill and not get the internets angry. There's nothing like a blog backlash to kind of get your priorities straight. What should People Magazine's priority be? Legal dustups with bloggers is certainly not one of them. Making people escape through entertainment gossip most certainly is.

I have sympathy for the people at People. Intellectual property rights are a vitally important institution of capitalism. Without them other people's innovations, products, and services can be too easily appropriated and firms lose incentives to take risks that lead to higher returns and value-creation. And it is capitalism that we are talking about here, after all. There was an auction, rights to property exchanged hands and contracts were signed. People paid for and believe they are entitled to an exclusive. It's hard to argue otherwise. No surprise then, that the people People are in no mood to chill. Here's an excerpt from a cease and desist letter that PerezHilton, the celebrity gossip blog, got from Mr. Nicholas J. Jollymore, Deputy Legal Counsel for Time Inc.

I am an attorney for Time Inc., the corporate publisher of PEOPLE Magazine. This will put you on notice of a copyright infringement on a website hosted by Crucial Paradigm. PEOPLE Magazine owns exclusive North American rights to the only photographs which have been taken to date of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and their newborn baby girl, Shiloh Nouvel. One of these photographs have been that appears on the cover of HELLO! Magazine has been posted on the web site www.perezhilton.com.

This letter is an official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to effect removal of this Copyright infringement. I hereby demand that you immediately (TODAY) issue a cancel message, as specified in RFC 1036, for the specified postings and prevent the infringer, who is identified by its Web address, from posting the infringing Photograph to your servers in the future. Please be advised that by law, as a service provider, you must act expeditiously remove or disable access to the infringing Photograph upon receiving this notice. Noncompliance may result in a loss of the possibility of immunity under the DMCA.

I'll not make the obvious joke here about Mr. Jollymore's tone being anything but jolly. Instead I'll say that the People people are not in a charitable mood and I understand why. Still, it is interesting to note how PerezHilton has responded: they apparently removed the infringing picture and created a post entitled "Brangelina's Baby" that provides a link to culturekitchen, where the picture can be viewed.

Hey, it's legal for us to do this. Click here to see the very controversial picture of The Baby. Props and kudos to whomever at Hello leaked the photo. It was totally done internally and intentionally, we're almost certain. That mag hasn't gotten so much attention in ages, and People magazine is sh**ting itself!

For the time being the image will be available on this site too. I am going to wait a few hours and see if I too get a notice. If I do, I'll comply. Given that I have used trackbacks and links to the URLs on the culturekitchen and perezhilton sites, I would be surprised if I don't here something soon....unless of course, the new Battle of Shiloh spreads so fast that People can't keep up. Let's see.

Tags: brangelina | Brad Pitt | Angelina Jolie | shiloh | angelinajolie | angelina jolie

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