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I think what they are referring to is the presentation of the photos (for lack of a better way to put it). Best way to describe it is that it's similar to the c
by larrys 12y ago
I think what they are referring to is the presentation of the photos (for lack of a better way to put it). Best way to describe it is that it's similar to the copyright that a company (back in the day) that created what is known as a reverse phone directory. That's where you could find someone's phone number by address (or address by phone number). The point being that even though all the info is public (anyone can input same info from a free phone directory) the act of organizing it and displaying it in a certain way (reversed by address as only one example) gives you copyright over the presentation of the material. So you can't grab that wholesale.
Another example that I can think of is dnjournal.com which publishes a list of domain sales which they gather primarily (but not exclusively) from easily available info from other sources (like sedo.com). So you are free to do the same from the same sources. However you can't take the list they created, that is lift it from their site, and publish it without violating their copyright.
There may of course be some other principle involved obviously but off the top the above seems possible.
Edit: Appears what I am referring to is possibly a version of "derivative" work:
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-derivative-works-under-copyright-law https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-derivative-works...
I think this also goes under "the golden rule" meaning he who has the gold rules. The film was undeveloped so someone could argue that that act was instrumental in making the pictures able to be seen (seems like a scotus grade discussion). The original owner took the pictures but he never created the image which people see. The image was created by the person who now claims copyright. Without the developing there are no images. May not win but perhaps most importantly a leg to stand on.
- delinka 12y agoBut they claim copyright on "all images" on the site. This would have the implication that simply pulling the images off the site (and not using their web site presentation) for use anywhere else would be infringement. Does their scanning of the photos add such a transformative element that they hold copyright on these images? Perhaps it could but I don't believe that it does in this case. As to the phone number lookup examples, lists of facts cannot be protected under copyright. My understanding is that this extends to indexes of facts as well. Though there may indeed be a presentation or transformative element (which may have copyright protection), the underlying facts (and their indices) do not have copyright protection. I've seen many websites attempting to make this claim with lists, and they make it technically non-trivial to copy the data from their site, but should such a case actually make it to court, I don't think the claim would hold water.
- larrys 12y ago"Does their scanning of the photos add such a transformative element" Keep in mind also that they did more than scanning. They took undeveloped film and developed it first. (Which took effort and skill with old film). Without that development the pictures would not exist (see my updated "edit"). "I've seen many websites attempting to make this claim with lists, and they make it technically non-trivial to copy the data from their site, but should such a case actually make it to court, I don't think the claim would hold water." This is not unusual since most things don't end up in court and what you are trying to do is attempt to scare someone into not taking a chance of infringing. Example is a few years ago we got notices to pay $650 for some images on a website we had from getty images for something that came off of a cd in the 90's (clip art) that was clearly purchased with a license. Getty had no right to do that but they "sprayed and prayed" hoping that some people would pay the $650. Of course it wouldn't hold up in court but there is no doubt that some companies (not ours) paid the $650 (or whatever the amount was don't remember). Nobody goes to court over $650 and hires a lawyer to defend etc.
- delinka 12y ago"Keep in mind also that they did more than scanning." This bit is irrelevant to copyright law.
- DanBC 12y agoI'm a bit confused here. When I take my roll of film to the chemist for the. To run through their machine; or I send it off to a lab; or I develop it myself; the copyright for the images still stay with me. Why does developing the film give them any rights?
- anigbrowl 12y agoHe's completely wrong; it doesn't.
- jacquesm 12y agoNone of this really matters. Developing a film does not involve an implied transfer of copyright, no matter how good the person in the darkroom is.