Nirvana sued by the man who appeared on Nevermind’s album cover as a baby(bbc.com)

173 pointsby sohkamyung5 tahun yang lalu333 comments

Nirvana sued by the man who appeared on Nevermind’s album cover as a baby

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58327844

333 comments

EMM_3865 tahun yang lalu

This seems to be a cash grab.

Note this same guy re-created the album cover only 5 years ago. He didn't seem to have much of a problem at that time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-37478523

fastball5 tahun yang lalu

An amazing case of the Streisand Effect.

> Elden alleges his "true identity and legal name are forever tied to the commercial sexual exploitation he experienced as a minor which has been distributed and sold worldwide from the time he was a baby to the present day".

Absolutely had no idea what the legal name of the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind was. But now I do!

tromp5 tahun yang lalu

It took him 30 years to become what's depicted on the cover, an attempted cash grab.

giuliomagnifico5 tahun yang lalu

> Non-sexualised photos of infants are generally not considered child pornography under US law. However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker".

This (the dollar as a sex worker) seems to a difficult position to hold. We’ll see what will happen in court.

Edit: I’ve always thought the dollar was here to say “everyone want to be rich, also newborns”, or something similar, never thought the newborn as a sex worker.

Borrible5 tahun yang lalu

So after 30 years, he's still after that dollar?

So apparently he still can't keep his head above water on his own.

Well my sympathy goes more to guys like Aqualung and its painter anyway:

https://theoutline.com/post/4490/jethro-tull-aqualung-cover-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17052400

If I were Spencer Elden, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Nevermind.

maverwa5 tahun yang lalu

This, to me, looks like a case where both parties are "wrong". I think its wrong to put photos of people who cannot (or have not) agreed in the public, especially photos of children, even more so when its not just some publication, but your damn Album cover. Also looking at you, scorpions. But I also think the "the dollar makes it look like a sex worker" spin is ridicoulus. Sounds to me like a claim that just exists to spin up the media and make sure the original claim ("you did not have the right wo put that image on that cover without covering") gets through.

So yeah, I guess that guy should get some of the Nirvana money. But cut the sex worker crap.

stef255 tahun yang lalu

This article from 2015 isn't going to do him much good

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/16/thats-m...

"It is a weird thing to get my head around, being part of such a culturally iconic image. But it’s always been a positive thing and opened doors for me. I’m 23 now and an artist, and this story gave me an opportunity to work with Shepard Fairey for five years, which was an awesome experience."

"It helps with girls, too"

"I might have one of the most famous penises in the music industry, but no one would ever know that to look at me. Sooner or later, I want to create a print of a real-deal re-enactment shot, completely naked. Why not? I think it would be fun."

S_A_P5 tahun yang lalu

Sometimes people land on hard times so they make ill advised decisions. Lets be honest here, nobody is going to look at the adult and say hey I remember you- you're the naked baby on the nirvana album. He is the one who did that, by recreating the photo multiple times and doing interviews.

If we want to talk about gross album covers, I seem to remember a Scorpions album from the 70s that I don't ever care to see again or even look up...

thanatos5195 tahun yang lalu

I wonder if the baby on the right is still into peeing on himself or would like to sue Logitech now.

https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/23267/baby/l...

nilawafer5 tahun yang lalu

In 1991, the year "Nevermind" was released, the band Nirvana was not yet nationally known, and nowhere close in popularity to the internationally known super-legendary band they are viewed as now. Who knows if Nirvana would have even reached such levels of fame if Kurt Cobain were still alive today?

Nirvana, before the release of "Nevermind", their first major label release ever, was just a local garage band from Aberdeen, WA (not even from Seattle). Nobody cared about them except some high school kids from Washington state who had seen them live. There was no internet, smart phones, or social media shaping our values and popular culture. People still listened to the radio and bought cassette tapes and CDs at local record stores. The majority of the social standards we are discussing here and now likely didn't even exist as widely shared common values in 1991, over 30 years ago.

Dude wasn't the "Nirvana baby" - he was just the neighbor/ baby of friend of the family who happened to be there at the time. If they didn't use him, any other baby would have been fine. The idea of the photo/ album cover design would have been made into reality either way with or without him as the specific baby.

bdavid21wnec5 tahun yang lalu

If this guy had a brain, he would be trying to get the rights to his image and instead create an NFT of the cover and sell it for millions. Instead I hope he gets nothing

ramraj075 tahun yang lalu

Another unpopular opinion here but cash grab or not the facts are clear - he was a baby, he didn’t consent to the photo, and a lot of people made a lot of money from it.

The only internally consistent solution I can see is that children below age of consent should not be allowed to contribute to commercial art in any form. That’d mean no more child actors, and that would sound heretical to many, but I see no other solutio.

Bellamy5 tahun yang lalu

I hope they guy gets nothing and has to pay everyone's court costs.

I have never seen such a clear cash in attempt. I hope the judge laugh's this guy out of the court room if it goes that far.

luckyandroid5 tahun yang lalu

Could have sworn I'd seen interviews/articles before about how this person doesn't care and uses it to brag to his friends.

bastardoperator5 tahun yang lalu

Someone is hard up for cash, not sure if it's the attorney or the plaintiff.

codingdave5 tahun yang lalu

IANAL of course, but if they had no authorization to use the photo, that sounds like a plausible claim. The CP charges do not sound plausible.

But that is how our legal system works - you don't ask for what you really believe is fair, you throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. I suspect that the CP claim is just for negotiation, to get a settlement on the more reasonable claim.

croes5 tahun yang lalu

Let's ask the model for the album cover of Killer Virgin from The Scorpions.

Must be an american thing, nudity =sex

bgeeek5 tahun yang lalu

It would be quite amusing if the final verdict was, amongst other things, "Never mind"

lmilcin5 tahun yang lalu

> The legal case also alleges that Nirvana had promised to cover Elden's genitals with a sticker, but the agreement was not upheld.

But erlier:

> Elden says his parents never signed a release authorising the use of his image on the album.

Umm... get your story straight?

eplanit5 tahun yang lalu

The fact that he re-created the image on his own several times as a teenager and as an adult, along with his expression of seeing it all as a benefit: "It's always been a positive thing and opened doors for me... when he heard I was the Nirvana baby, he thought that was really cool." should get the suit properly tossed out. I say "should"...

drewzero15 tahun yang lalu

I've been thinking about this image recently thanks to the cover image of The "Weird Al"-phabet podcast[0] which was a parody of the cover of Weird Al Yankovic's 1992 album Off the Deep End[1], which in turn was a parody of the Nevermind cover art. Weird Al's work has often stood on the shoulders of giants, but I appreciate the way he adds something significant to it (almost) every time.

[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weird-al-phabet/id...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_Deep_End#/media/File:W...

carl_dr5 tahun yang lalu

I’m late to this post, but I’ve read through it and can’t see this addressed, so here is a genuine question.

What is the law in the US regarding photos captured either in public or on private property?

So I invite my friends around, one couple have a young son, another has a camera. The latter takes a picture of the former swimming in my pool.

Later, the latter sells the photo he took to a record company who put it on then cover of what would be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade.

Is the law in the US that the photographer needs to get a release for any person in the photo? I don’t think that’s the case here in the UK, but I am willing to be corrected.

Here, I think if I take a photo anywhere where I am permitted, I own the copyright to the picture and can do anything I like with it. (I understand there are some exceptions, usually involving trademark rather than copyright?)

sowbug5 tahun yang lalu

One interesting outcome of this lawsuit, whether it's successful or not, is that any future sort of artwork like this will be produced with GAN-based technology such as https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/. Why risk questions of human consent when humans can be taken out of the loop?

Someone might even monetize it by running a GAN service that, for a fee, hashes all an image's GAN inputs plus a snapshot of the code and publishes the hash in an Ethereum block to prove that (1) the image really was produced synthetically, and (2) it was produced no later than a certain timestamp. TODO: include keyword "NFT" for maximum hype.

ziml775 tahun yang lalu

If this case wins on the argument that it's sexual, doesn't that mean that everyone who owns a copy of the album possesses child porn? At the very least it certainly must mean that his parents and the photographer need to be jailed for producing child porn.

hermitsings5 tahun yang lalu

"Smells like greed spirit." https://twitter.com/fookingods/status/1430468274412670976

honzzz5 tahun yang lalu

I wish I could somehow steer attention from this guy and this topic to how great album it was.

JohnWhigham5 tahun yang lalu

Lawyers exploiting perverted and archaic puritanical values many Americans still hold in order to squeeze out a quick buck. Truly and uniquely American.

paulpauper5 tahun yang lalu

He should just do an NFT of the cover. probavby make way more $ than any settlement

[deleted]5 tahun yang lalu

smitty1e5 tahun yang lalu

To paraphrase Clausewitz, "Lawfare is the continuation of advertising by other means."