But I do. This probably makes me a huge dork, but when you work on things for national broadcast, not being sued is usually a plus. And after some work I did designing labels for a DVD about AIDS in America, I became quite familiar with the fun, exciting world of licensing royalty-free stock photos. Mainly, the fact that yes, even if you pay for them, you can’t use them for absolutely anything. It’s understandable, particularly with a subject like AIDS. After all, you might imply that the models in the images had the disease.

Now, there’s been a lot of talk today about the mysterious building looming behind McCain for part of his acceptance speech. (I particularly enjoyed the snarky “must be one of his seven houses!” assumptions. It’s actually Walter Reed Middle School in California.)

But I find a less-noticed story much more interesting: that a lot of the stills used in his introductory video aren’t actually pictures of supporters, but generic images purchased from iStockphoto. I will trust that the convention planners paid for the proper license fees for broadcasting. But I’m not so sure they read the fine print: iStockphoto’s content license agreement states that

4. Standard License Prohibitions
7. use or display any Content that features a model or person in a manner that (i) would lead a reasonable person to think that such person uses or personally endorses any business, product, service, cause, association or other endeavour; or (ii) that depicts such person in a potentially sensitive subject matter, including, but not limited to mental and physical health issues, social issues, sexual or implied sexual activity or preferences, substance abuse, crime, physical or mental abuse or ailments, or any other subject matter that would be reasonably likely to be offensive or unflattering to any person reflected in the Content

Certainly sounds to me like you can’t use them for a political campaign. And as far as I can tell, there’s no way to buy a license from iStockphoto that doesn’t include this provision. Aside from the whole “getting sued” issue, why is this a problem? Well, one of the people in the film could go public, say “Hey wait! I like Obama!” and the campaign cannot respond with “too bad, you signed a model release.” That’s just not an acceptable answer if you’ve broken the terms of use agreement. I think any of the people pictured has a right to complain if they don’t support McCain’s campaign.

If this was some local ad or limited release publication, that would be one thing. But almost 40 million people watched this speech! And, well, can’t you find some real supporters? Stock photos look like stock photos, period. And make you look fake.