Photo Copyright Waiver at WalMart, Walgreens and CVS???

If you need to print some photos taken by someone else using print services at places like Walmart, Walgreen and CVS; be careful!  Why? Well if the photographs look “too professional” for them, they will ask for copyright information.  Some places will require a printed copyright release before allowing you to pick up the prints, even after you’ve paid for them.

The Consumerist has a story of a woman named Jessica who ran into problems at Walmart after collecting photos from a couple pro photographer friends for a friend’s funeral:
See, Jessica’s friend was a professional photographer, as is her friend’s husband, who had e-mailed Jessica the photos to have printed. “So even their candid pictures appear professional,” she explains to Consumerist.
[...] In addition to those photos, Jessica says that Walmart wanted copyright info on a couple of shots that had been taken at a pro studio like Olan Mills back in the ’70s.
“There was no mark on them to indicate where they were taken, and my friend’s mom had sent me those,” writes Jessica. “She paid for them back in the day when they were taken, and she scanned them for me last week. How am I supposed to get written copyrights for every single picture?
Jessica had also checked a box affirming that she had permission to print the images while on Walmart’s website. Protecting copyright is a good thing, but having employees make decisions on whether photos are “too professional” after they’ve already been printed and paid for doesn’t seem like a very good system.
I will not use WalMart or any other Photo Printing Companies to printing & I do not encourage any of my friends to use WalMart for printing. It has happened to me as a rookie photographer, they were my images, and I needed the copyright release printed out on a business letterhead, such a pain!

Closing the Broadband Opportunity Gap with Comcast

Comcast's $9.99 Internet for low-income families

See about Comcast’s new program, Internet Essentials. http://www.internetessentials.com/ . They will provide broadband internet access for $9.95 per month to families whose children qualify for free or reduced lunch and will offer and internet-ready computer to the families for $150.00. It’s called the Internet Essentials that was launched a few months ago. 

Some of their accomplishments in the few months since it started are in a progress report progress report .  

According to Comcast they inform In a blog post, that they listed a litany of achievements in the first six months of the program including:

• Publicized the program across more than 4,000 school districts and over 30,000 schools, which have approximately 3.5 million National School Lunch Program (NSLP) families, of which 2 million qualify for free meals under the NSLP and, therefore, are eligible for Internet Essentials;
• Worked with more than 3,000 partners, including governors; mayors; local, state, and federal legislators, and community-based organizations, including churches, libraries, and PTAs, to promote InternetEssentials and engage eligible families in their communities;
• By the end of 2011, over 10,000 individuals and organizations had registered for the Partner Portal, the portal had experienced over 100,000 unique visits, and partners had requested 11.5 million pieces of promotional collateral —all at no charge to the partner organizations.
• Offered approximately 300 in-person digital literacy training sessions with more than 1,250 individual attendees;
• Empowered nearly 100,000 Comcast employees to directly connect eligible families in their communities;
• Connected over 41,000 families (an estimated 160,000 Americans) to the power of the Internet in their homes, some for the very first time; an distributed over 5,500 computers at less than $150 each.

This could be an opportunity for many of our students so pass the information to your neighbor so they can take advantage of this.