Illinois Press Association, IHSA, Reportedly Settle Photography Lawsuit
SPRINGFIELD, IL (April 8, 2008) - The Illinois Press Association and the Illinois High School Association have reportedly reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit filed in a disagreement over IHSA's attempt to control access to high school championship events and the secondary use by newspapers of images from those tournaments.
The settlement agreement may be announced as early as today. If both parties agree and the court accepts the settlement, the lawsuit will be dismissed and the court will retain the authority to enforce the settlement agreement.
According to the lawsuit's settlement agreement, newspaper photographers will not be restricted from covering state high school tournament events, and the secondary use of photographs and video from those events will not be regulated by IHSA.
In effect, IHSA has ended up - after fighting it for months - recognizing all of IPA's original complaints and meeting newspapers' and IPA's demands for access and freedom from IHSA-imposed restrictions.
The settlement agreement is between the plaintiffs, the IPA along with the State Journal-Register and The Northwest Herald, and the defendant, IHSA. The agreement will be filed in the court where the suit was first entered, in the Circuit Court of the Seventh Judicial Circuit in Sangamon County, IL.
The terms of the settlement agreement call for the withdrawal of Illinois legislation, introduced in the state's Senate and House in January and already passed in the House, that would prohibit IHSA from enforcing a policy that would have given a private company exclusive rights to sell state championship sporting event photographs.
According to the settlement agreement, sponsors of the legislation in the House and Senate are aware of the agreement and have said that they will withdraw their bills from the legislative calendar if the court approves of the agreement.
The settlement agreement gives Illinois newspaper photographers a guarantee of floor, field, or site-level access to all IHSA sponsored events, and IHSA will assert no authority or control over the production, distribution, or sales of newspaper photographs or videos. The agreement also says that credentials will not have any conditions attached to them regarding what newspapers do with the products they create by covering IHSA events.
IHSA will be responsible for creating "shooting zones" for photographers with credentials, the settlement agreement says, and all will have equal access, but certain IHSA official photographers may have unrestricted access outside the shooting zones in order to create training, promotional, and educational videos and photographs.
The official representatives who will sign the settlement agreement for the court are IPA executive director David L. Bennett, and IHSA's executive director Martin Hickman.
On April 1, 2008, the Illinois Senate voted 47-5 in favor of a bill that would prohibit the Illinois High School Association from regulating the use of news photographs and the media's access to public high school competitions. An identical bill was pending in the state's House of Representatives.
"Being able to control our content is a core issue," IPA president P. Carter Newton said after the Senate voted.
At the beginning of the year IHSA tried to deny press photographers access to tournament games unless they signed IHSA's waiver and release that said the newspaper would abide by IHSA's terms. Then in February in a sudden reversal, IHSA said that press photographers with valid credentials could cover the girls state basketball finals in Bloomington, IL, without signing the forms.
Last fall the IHSA refused to allow sideline access to five Illinois newspapers during the state's high school football championships because those newspapers refused to agree not to make their photographs available for sale. Several state newspapers were also denied floor access during state high school wrestling and cheerleading championships.
That's when Illinois lawmakers stepped into the fight over whether the IHSA can prevent newspaper photographers from covering public school academic and sporting championship events games, and whether they can regulate the secondary use of photographs and videos that come from the events.
Illinois Rep. Joseph M. Lyons (D-Chicago) and Sen. James A. DeLeo (D-Chicago) had proposed legislation intended to resolve the conflict and to keep it from happening again. House Bill 4582, if voted on and signed into law, would have provided open access to all competitions, from elementary school to high school levels, including sports and academic activities.
In November 2007 the IPA, representing Illinois newspapers, sued the IHSA over the issue of access to high school championship events and photo sales. The parties said they were trying to reach an out of court settlement on the issue of "secondary use" of images right up until the end of November, when several Illinois newspapers were surprised to find that their photographers were shut out from the eight championship football games and the title games because IHSA said they were not "in compliance" on the issue of print sales.
In December 2007 the IHSA filed a counter suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield asking a judge to declare that IHSA has the exclusive right to sell photographs taken at high school sporting events, and the right to impose limits on how newspapers use photographs, and for permission to restrict newspapers' access to IHSA games if editors and publishers fail to comply with IHSA polices.
The countersuit named IPA, the Peoria Journal Star, The State Register-Journal in Springfield, and The Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, and asked for at lease $50,000 in damage payments. An IHSA statement issued after the suit was filed said the action was necessary "to bring a definitive resolution" to the dispute.
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