A Problematic Picture for Posts About a Problem

I took a picture of canned meat covered by tags to talk about a problem called tag spam. Tag Spam refers to the use of post tags to gain extra awards.

I thought I might use the same can of meat to create an image for use on the SteemIt Platform.

The picture brings up one of the biggest challenges in the photography world on the Internet. What should photographers do about all of the trademarks and logos that invariably end up on photos. The toy train is covering part but not all of the logo on the canned meat.

My understanding is that Hormel has decided not to aggressively defend its trademark brand of canned meat from being used to describe unwanted media messages.

Professional photographers usually take great care to remove product logos that might appear in their pictures.

However, this care to remove product logos from pictures masks the extent to which people in the modern world are inundated with logos and other media messages. It is hard to take a picture in the city that doesn't include at least one logo.

Because this photo includes part of a trademarked logo, it is not suitable for use as a a stock image. Unfortunately, I think it would be a great image to use for discussions about proper netiquette on SteemIt.

There needs to be an ongoing discussion about how one separates good marketing from spammy marketing. There also needs to be discussions about when images violate copyright and trademark laws. Does this picture cover enough of the logo, or is it problematic.

The legal system is odd. People can sue over almost anything. As the saying goes: A grand jury could indict a ham sandwich. Hormel would have an even better case suing over a SPAM sandwich.

Brands and marketing are parts of modern life. Different people will have different ideas of what is spammy behavior and what is a trademark violation.

I think this is a good picture for starting discussions. But it might be problematic.