Although well-meaning, Ina Fried does not seem to be aware that:

• YouTube is used by artists (although YouTube, oddly, does not have a channel for artists who do not fall under the umbrella of Director), as are other popular websites for user-generated content, like Flickr
• artist-specific websites for content display, such as Saatchi Online and MyArtSpace also exist (although they haven’t been around as long as DeviantArt)

What I did get from Fried’s article was exposure to the Coton v. TVX Films case. This case was initiated last year when Lara Jade Coton found that a self-portrait she had taken when she was 14 was used on the cover of a porn flick called Body Magic. The self-portrait, unlike the growing collection of 14-year-olds’ self-portraits found on sites like MySpace, is sexy but is not sexually-explicit/erotic and doesn’t contain nudity.

TVX Films (sorry, I’m not linking to their website, but you can search for them easily enough) shoot themselves in the foot by (a) removing Coton’s copyright notice from the photo and (b) indicating on the back of the DVD case that “Everyone associated with this DVD is 18 or over”. Although Coton’s website currently indicates that she is 18, she was not 18 in the photo and TVX Films wouldn’t have much to support that they were able to validate her age without having been in contact with her.

With child exploitation and copyright infringement being such hot topics right now, TVX being a big, bad company in the porn industry and Coton being a beautiful and talented young artist, I don’t expect TVX Films to be able to get away with this one.