what makes a photograph ...yours?

joeseph wrote in post #17232085
pretty hard to prove positive it was you, but in the senario the OP posted, the owner of the camera would be in the picture so would have been pretty unlikely to have pressed the shutter...

Yes, but from that it still does not follow that it was you who took the picture, only who didn't. And there can even be doubt about that as the picture could have been taken with the self timer. Unless that registers in the exif. Don't know about that.

jra wrote in post #17228738
Whomever presses the button is the owner of the photograph unless their is a contract between the two parties that says different.

I wonder how that plays out with trail cameras. The animal triggered the photo to be taken, so are all of those photos in the public domain? I don't mean to dispute your position, as I think you are correct, but it does raise more questions.

Of course, if a person took an award winning photo with my rig (good luck, haha) he might find a steep bill for the purchase of the memory card.

iowajim wrote in post #17232339
I wonder how that plays out with trail cameras. The animal triggered the photo to be taken, so are all of those photos in the public domain? I don't mean to dispute your position, as I think you are correct, but it does raise more questions.

Of course, if a person took an award winning photo with my rig (good luck, haha) he might find a steep bill for the purchase of the memory card.

A case can be made that by setting the trail camera up and activating the motion detector the owner of the camera is responsible for the actuation in the same way you would own surveillance video taken under similar circumstances. .

iowajim wrote in post #17232339
I wonder how that plays out with trail cameras. The animal triggered the photo to be taken, so are all of those photos in the public domain? I don't mean to dispute your position, as I think you are correct, but it does raise more questions.

Of course, if a person took an award winning photo with my rig (good luck, haha) he might find a steep bill for the purchase of the memory card.

"whoever presses the button" is an oversimplification as far as I am aware. In the case of something like a trail cam the human setting it up and configuring the camera 'enables' it, and sets it to fire under specific conditions. They are still the 'creator' of those images, as each image is then captured under the conditions they've specified (something sets off the motion sensor/x time has passed, etc). The laws in Canada seem somewhat vague on those exact points, but I have never found a case that went to trial where such copyright was deemed invalid and have instead seen a few cases where it was upheld during infringement cases.

The other aspect of copyright law that a lot of internet "lawyers" seem to gloss over is that of multiple authors, and the fact that there is more to 'creating' a photo than merely pressing a button.

In short, the law can get kind of vague when you introduce relatively complex environments during the creation of a photo or any other creative work, and you should probably not rely on random information you pull off the web over talking to a IP lawyer familiar with your local laws.

iowajim wrote in post #17232339
I wonder how that plays out with trail cameras. The animal triggered the photo to be taken, so are all of those photos in the public domain? I don't mean to dispute your position, as I think you are correct, but it does raise more questions.

Of course, if a person took an award winning photo with my rig (good luck, haha) he might find a steep bill for the purchase of the memory card.

I think that the situation of a trail camera would be similar to using the exposure trapping feature on Magic Lantern to capture lightning. You set up the rig so the copyright is yours. Similarly, if you set up a trail camera (or a similar motion activated rig) the the copyright is yours for those images.

In the example with the monkey, one of the stories (not the original one) was that the photographer pre-set up his camera and then encouraged the monkeys to play with it. In that scenario, he would have had copyright because it was his work even though the monkey pressed the shutter. However, he first claimed that the monkey stole his camera, thus it wasn't intentional work on his part.