Last Wednesday I attended an interesting symposium given by the The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) at The New York Times auditorium. It was titled Copyright and the New Economy: Issues and Trends facing Visual Artists. Eugene Mopsik, the Executive Director of ASMP started off the event by introducing Victor Perlman, who is their legal counsel. Perlman gave a history of copyright and also took some questions from the audience. He was followed by Brian Storm who gave an amazing presentation about his company Media Storm, and what they do. The question is what don't they do? He seemed to have the pulse on everything about the digital age in terms of creating media, getting it seen, monitoring who had seen it etc. I heard there was a lively afternoon session as well including many important people in the industry. Five members of APAG attended the event, including: Julie Grahame, Emma Winter, Elaine Schatt, Melissa Stevens, and Len Speier and his son Jonathan.

I also wanted to mention the work that Melissa Stevens and the Shaw Family Archives are doing to lobby against a bill that is currently pending in Albany. It would create a new law giving celebrities a retroactive right of publicity after death. They are working hard on behalf of all of us to try to make sure this doesn't happen, as it would curtail the ability of some archives to have the ability to exhibit and or license many of their photographs.

Also, Julie Grahame has started an online magazine titled a curator. It is definately worth taking a look at, and the latest feature on gay teens by M. Sharkey is very moving.
Go to http://www.acurator.com./

Regards,
Mary Engel