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Ever since I started using Creative Commons as a licensing model for many of my pictures on flickr I have been wondering how to deal with pictures of other people. Since I'm just a hobby photographer I am new to the whole matter of rights and licensing of pictures but I have heard the term model release on several occasions.

Up to now, my modus operandi was to assign a CC license only to pictures that do not show individual people in a recognizable manner but using the all rights reserved setting for those. While this is certainly one possibility it imposes some limitations on the usefulness of CC licenses plus flickr doesn't allow others to view theses images in high resolutions.

After some online research I came across this story confirming what I was afraid of: Someone uploaded an image with a person on it under a CC license and someone else used the image for an advertisement and got sued.

This article gives some detailed information on the topic of model releases and on when it is required and by whom.

The essential point is that these two things don't have anything to do with each other. A publisher would need a model release for publishing an image with a person on it. The photographer does not need a model release and basically is not responsible for providing this to anyone. The Creative Commons license only states that anyone using the pictures is free to do so from the producer's point of view.

So what I will do from now on is license people shots as CC BY NC. If anyone has any thoughts on this or even some more "professional" advice or any other feedback is welcome!

Of course the general IANAL clause applies here. This is just what I found online and I summarized the crucial points. It is not supposed to be any legal advice.

As already mentioned here I went on a trip to Tehrān (تهران) for Weindy & Asefe's wedding ceremony in December. I enjoyed the great hospitality of Asefe's family and got a glimpse into a very different culture.

Below you can find a selection of my favorite pictures from being in Tehrān. The full set is also available in my flickr as a large slide show.

As I'm currently getting ready to leave on another trip, I have to keep this post shorter than I intended it to be, but I will do a longer entry with some of my thoughts on this trip soon. Meanwhile, please enjoy the pictures without further commentary.

on a sidenote: The flickr set and a full set of images in a zip file is now available for download to everyone on the mailinglist. Should you not have a password yet, please let me know and I will get you an account on my server ASAP

I guess I am what you would call fashionably late this year, but I still want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas and joyful holidays together with your loved ones.

2008 has been an extremely challenging year for me as many of you know, but I did achieve most of the goals set and am happy to start into a new year freed from some of the burdens of the past years.

Below is a small selection of pictures showing what has been going on this year starting with snowboarding in France, followed by the many weddings I attended this year and closing off with pictures from the trips to New York City and Tehran at the end of this year.

All the best to you and your families, a happy and successful new year and I hope to see all of you soon again.

Tonight I will embark on a journey to Tehrān, Iran to join the wedding ceremony of Weindy and Asefe the following night.

I'm really excited not only to see a new country but also for having the opportunity of getting immersed in a whole different culture.

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The flight schedule is a bit of drag, leaving Munich in the evening and arriving in Iran at 04:30 am local time but going through Istanbul was the best travel option available for those dates. Munich is currently covered in a thick blanket of fog, so we'll see how the flight schedule works out tonight. I am following the principle of traveling light, going with only one piece of carry on luggage, to avoid any hassles about lost luggage, even though it was quite a challenge to cram my camera gear plus clothes in such little room.

I will try and post an update or two on this blog while in Iran, and also upload some snapshots to my flickr depending on the quality of the internet connection in the hotel room.

Free at Last

Thank you all for your patience over the last few months. I know, I haven't been very approachable or much of an enrichment to conversations lately. Totally immersed in working on my thesis topic plus doing all the additional job related tasks just didn't leave much room for a social life. But today I'm very pleased to announce that
my thesis work is finally completed. This weekend I will try to catch up on some of the lost sleep from the past couple of months and then reboot in life mode again!

After having worked on the final draft on Thursday until 4am I headed on over to printy, which did a great job on printing and binding my thesis and I was able to turn it in before lunch. I know to some of you it might come as a disappointment that I actually turned the thesis in 3 days before the final deadline, but what can I say: Maybe I'm getting old, too ;)

Should you be interested in any of the results of my thesis, please check back on my professional blog in the coming weeks. Even though I wont be able to post the complete work due to restrictions from the companies involved in it, I will share some of the results.

So long, and hope to see all of you soon again, so I can make up for all the social downtime lately.

Since the update frequency of my personal blog has suffered a bit lately from the enormous stress level this year, and a lot of things on my website have been getting old, including the design, I decided to relaunch this site, with a fresh design and a new platform basis, movable type 4.

This blog will continue to cover all things personal regarding my life around the web. For anything related to my career and topics directly related to IT and software development, please refer to my professional blog on thomasjaehnel.com.

This blog will be kept mostly in English except for some rare occasions where it doen't make sense to post in English.

Technorati Tags: facebook, funny, video

Since I'm getting asked about twitter on a regular basis now even from people who are into IT I figured I should do a post about it.

Twitter is basically a service to broadcast status messages whereever you are and get the status of your friends on the go. It sends you text messages (SMS), instant messages or you can use twhirl, an excellent AIR client or your browser to read and post new messages. It lets you configure who's messages you want on your phone and who's not, etc. Go watch the video below and sign up for an account. You can find me here.

Technorati Tags: twitter, web 2.0

As most of you have already heard, I passed all my exams last week at the Technical University of Munich! To leave something for the poor souls who will have to go through the Diplomhauptprüfung in years to come, I have just uploaded my compilation of information on the classes that I was tested in. I don't assume this will be very useful except for the person who wrote it, but sometimes it can help to get a short explanation of something before diving into the matter. So here it is [600k, pdf], I hope it is of some use.

Technorati Tags: DHP, Diplom, exams, TUM

Just came across a really scary story on schneier's blog: Apparently the FBI is planting fake links in online message boards claiming to lead to child porn. Once you click on them, your IP address is recorded and your house might be searched and you might be arrested. Here are more details on one case on ars technica.

So watch out next time someone is sending you a funny link on IM or in emails. It's hard to imagine how anyone with a half way decent knowledge of internet technology and IT security can come up with such an idea? There are so many ways of how you could end up on the list without ever doing anything related to visiting such a message board, and using this as the only basis of a federal investigation is just unbelievable.

Technorati Tags: FBI, security