I guess the point I would like to make for US based photographers is that you can protect your works for extended periods of time if you register your works properly and plan your estate properly, but it will have to be treated like a business expense and is not something that will be free or cheap (unless you just happen to be a copyright lawyer who is a pro photographer) or easy.
The legislation introduced is NOT intended to displace your normal rights; those are still in place BUT they are up to you to invoke.
If want your images treated as intellectual property, then you have to treat them as such yourself and invest time, money and energy to exploit and protect their intrinsic value, otherwise why should the State run around behind you and pick up your dirty laundry?
Is there a difference between copyrighting a negative and am image? What I mean when you make a print from an 'old' negative is the copyright inherent to the 'new' print?
If want your images treated as intellectual property, then you have to treat them as such yourself and invest time, money and energy to exploit and protect their intrinsic value, otherwise why should the State run around behind you and pick up your dirty laundry?
I have no desire to have the State run about behind me, picking up my dirty laundry, but I also don't expect them to run around throwing the mud to make the laundry dirty. I have invested the money to ensure my intellectual properties, and will continue to fight tooth and nail to make sure they stay in place!
once upon a time we could say "only in America" in response to things like this, sadly these things infiltrate our society as we copy so much of American life...
I was making a broad reaching statment as was another in this thread...
By the way, I do happen to be incorporated and have been for many years now, in fact in the photography business, I have three corporations.
We are not talking about locations being copyrighted, we are talking about the image I take being copyrighted, pretty easy, just cause Ansel took a picture of half dome, don't mean I can't take a picture at the same location...but it is still not the picture Ansel took, now is it...
If you don't like my expansive comment, then don't read it, now if it makes you feel better to direct your flames at me, then so be it
Have fun, get out and take pictures, and put your butt in a cooler place..
LOL
Dave
Dave,
OK, I sat in snowbank and I am better... ;-) I don't know why this stuff gets my goat...
No, I know that locations can't be copyrighted, but infringement can be interpreted to include artistic intent, which then can be construed to include the subject, angle, time of day, etc., so in a round-about way, location CAN be copyrighted. If Adams wanted to go after everyone who took a photo of half dome from a vantage point even remotely similar, he could have done so; he would have been insane, but he could have done so and might have won in some instances.
IMHO, the concept of a well regulated body of art and literature in the public domain is important to a democratic society.
Why do people find that threatening?
Sponsored Ad. (Subscribers to APUG
have the option to remove this ad.)
Sounds like something the stock photo houses would love to see go through! Imagine all the millions of images in their files that will survive the photographer's who produced them and the millions or billions of potential revenues those images can generate after the photographer is dead that the stock house do not have to pay out.
Also, how does this reflect on the royalty free images on cd's? You just pay one fee and can use the images as many times as you want? Technically you are not supposed to pass them on to others, but whose to police millions on millions of images circulating?
Just think of all those images that Google, Yahoo, and all the other search engines are indexing? These guys are making millions off all those images because the can base there advertising rates on the number of hits and views their search engines generate.
__________________
Time & tides wait for no one, especially photographers.
Is there a difference between copyrighting a negative and am image? What I mean when you make a print from an 'old' negative is the copyright inherent to the 'new' print?
Here in the US, the copyright clock starts ticking the moment you click the shutter. The only way an "Image" would have a new copyright date would be if you incorporated it in whole or in part into an entirely new work. Just reprinting an image at a different contrast grade, or adjusting the burning and dodging, would not automatically make it a "new" image. Now, if you solarized an image, and sepia-toned it, when you had previously made a "straight" print of it, that could in theory be considered a "new" work, and carry a different copyright date. It's sort of irrelevant since copyright law in the US is now life of the artist plus seventy-five years. The copyright date is more important for administrative and archival purposes than it is for determining when copyright expires. It is very important of course, for determining when an infringement occurs if it is actionable or not.
The hot issue, to this minor photographer and self employed person, is that as it sits today, one is entitled to only as much copyright protection as one can defend in court. One gets the Law one can Afford.
The LAW says one thing, but if a client wants to take your image, the client can.
YOU have to fight to get it back. If a opportunist 'artist' wants to take an image you made this morning, and 'appropriates' it, you have the right to FIGHT IT OUT for compensation. It is ONLY the threat that MIGHT defend their rights that keep criminal behaviour at bay. Not to mention, having the rights taken by another, like a patent thief.
We're not talking freeloading photographers seeking entitlements. It's simply the business of putting food on the table next week. The movie business is a little different ... if two commercial still photographers get together and agree what they will each charge a client, that is COLLUSION in this country, even if the client owns every media outlet in the state and can determine what each editor will pay in the name of a free and open market. That's right, photographers are not allowed to set rates. Fat lot of good that would do anyhow.
Consider that invoking Beethoven and the cost of a CD is a bit of a snowjob.
If YOU think that if you drag your 8x10 out into the prairie, make that once in a lifetime shot and instead of getting paid for the magazine cover you so richly earned, you find that International Outdoor Pictures is running it everywhere, making tons with it for advertising, and is suing you to get it off your website.... don't come crying to me. And good luck getting paid.
OK, I sat in snowbank and I am better... ;-) I don't know why this stuff gets my goat...
No, I know that locations can't be copyrighted, but infringement can be interpreted to include artistic intent, which then can be construed to include the subject, angle, time of day, etc., so in a round-about way, location CAN be copyrighted. If Adams wanted to go after everyone who took a photo of half dome from a vantage point even remotely similar, he could have done so; he would have been insane, but he could have done so and might have won in some instances.
IMHO, the concept of a well regulated body of art and literature in the public domain is important to a democratic society.
Why do people find that threatening?
Kino,
In actuallity, I have no problem with public domain, I do have a problem with being forced to to put my stuff in public domain, the only person who should make that choice is the artist or the artists designated envoy, I do agree, that there are a great many things that we would have missed without the public domain, but that should be the choice of the people involved and not a legislative body, who has no undestanding, lets face it, if your like me, 90% of the pictures I take, are not worthy of sale, but could be worthy of publication, but that should be my choice and not the choice of someone else who claims to have tried to contact me and "says" they can't find me, that is just to much latitude in my opinion, if something that I take belongs in the public domain, then it should be my choice..
Linear Mode
