Photo ownership (a little dsturbing, though....)

The issue whether these photos were taken with the permission of the enslaved people are not is moot. Legally taken or not does not transfer ownership of those image to the people in the image. There are many images of civil war era soldiers who didn't make it to another day, and I don't think their families gave permission for their likenesses to be used or photographed. I can sit on a street corner and take images of the people I see, and in no way do those people have any ownership in those images. Now if I were to try to commercialize their likenesses, another story. They could prevent me from "selling" those images for a commercial purpose. But again, they don't own that image. In non-commercial uses, they don't have the right to determine how I store or display those images.

I get the idea that the plaintiff here does not want her ancestors are being exploited again. We should all be sensitive to issues like these. Same with the images of indigenous peoples image taken around the same time. This is where legal right and wrong come to cross roads with ethically right and wrong. Happens all the time with photography. But if anything, I would hope that this lady sees these images as a testament to these peoples lives, and the sacrifices they were forced to make. Its a far better use than hiding them in a drawer somewhere.

The judge ruled properly here.

That said, it isn't uncommon for the law to uphold cease and desist demands of images when proper releases have not been obtained.

john crossley wrote in post #19204856
The world has gone mad; political correctness is the bane of modern-day society.

People living in the here and now should concentrate on the hear and now.

Absolutely John! Us old white men didn’t grow disproportionately wealthy and powerful on the back of the exploitation of other races and the plunder of their resources only to throw it all away by allowing them to the party!

This is a fascinating and compelling case.
I have to agree that the judge did the right thing by sticking with guidelines of copyright law.
And that, as Pigpen says, is a win for photographers, and legal system as a whole. It's pretty clear cut by how I understand things.

At the same time, I can't fault anybody for using this case to draw attention to the issues involved.

The photographer is always the owner of the content (with some exceptions where their skills and equipment are contracted by another party or employer). This is why PETA sued on behalf of a monkey (in 2018) in a very famous case where the primate grabbed a camera from a photographer David Slater and took several selfies by accident. PETA's lawsuit failed, by the way - but it sent the photographer (Slater) broke as a result of the lawsuit by PETA - who were in turn "blasted" by the Appeals Court for their folly. This has relevance because it showed that copyright was not automatically transferred to an entity that was not the owner of the camera.

We could discuss the laws of any country but the moral argument remains the same - that the photographer is the artist and creator of the image. Where law sometimes intrudes is where the "likeness" of a person is used to generate profit without (A) a model release or (B) without their permission to use their likeness for commercial purposes. Note that his usually expires on the death of the person in the image unless their family has has retained lawful permission to continue to make an income from the modeling career of the person who has since passed (sometimes referred to Estate rights).

You can't really claim ownership of historical images. History belongs to all of us. And why would the courts determine that the descendants of a subject be entitled to the images? They should be celebrating how far they've come over the generations and how positive this change has been. But Americans are constantly wringing their hands and looking for an easy dollar. This is why the rest of the world is always ridiculing the USA for being 'ambulance-chasers' and 'litigious'. The law is supposed to be based on an essence of "fairness" and yet this is never the first thought of the people who tend to sue through the courts for "compensation" etc. The idea that photographers in the 1800s or universities who maintain their works via archives could be sued by future generations because of the likeness of a distant relative is offset by the simple fact that those persons (subjects) are no longer alive to object or endorse the use of their images and likeness.

If the world eventually embraces the right of the public to censor photography (by claiming ownership of things they have no creative right to), we'll be in a far worse place for artistic interpretation, forensic observation and objective creation. I'd say the lawsuit in this case was inevitably doomed to failure. I don't imagine it would have been a pleasant day for everyone involved because the subject of Slavery in America is a sensitive one. Partly because of the political issues it raises but also because there's a demand for compensation from people today who had nothing to do with it yet are arguably blamed for their ancestors benefiting from it. How many tens of thousands died in the American Civil War and paid the ultimate price to end slavery? There's a lot of very well known key pharmaceutical companies today who benefited from experimenting on live prisoners of War during the Second World War. Many escaped justice by trading their documents with the allies for their freedom and a new life. We can only benefit from the terrible knowledge gained and move on to create a better world for the next generation to live in.

I would hope that people today can look back on images of Slavery in America and be afraid of what they see. The only positive thing that can come from any of this is education. That the images in question were used on a book cover shows that they are being applied in the right way to serve future generations.

A fascinating aspect of this is that Harvard displaying these images is them wearing the hair shirt that they deserve to wear for their complicity in the slave trade. The junk science that they were involved with, is detestable on more levels than I can explain with words.

The motivation to take the images away from Harvard almost seems at cross purposes with what the lawyers claim,
"It is past time for Harvard to atone for its past ties to slavery and white supremacy research and stop profiting from slave images."

How can Harvard atone? Not sure, but one step;
"In a statement, Harvard said it's exploring how to put the photos in "an appropriate home" that "allows them to be more accessible to a broader segment of the public and to tell the stories of the enslaved people that they depict."

In no way do i feel this is somehow balancing anything, please don't get me wrong. But admitting and displaying this colossal mistake, is far better than hiding it. If this lawsuit helped to push that admission, then I saw justice was done in more ways than one.

If we bury our heads in the sand, by removing from display all evidence of wrongs done in the past, we delude ourselves about the wrongs of current times and never fix what is still broken!

Our daughter just witnessed the wrongs of today. She stood in line to get an appointment for a COVID vaccine, and there were many Asians in the line, because the location happens to be in a part of town with a large population of Vietnamese immagrant families. Lots of those families came to the US over 30 years ago, became proud naturalized citizens and gave birth to native-born Americans. Yet our daughter heard lots of anti-Asian sentiments hurled at those standing in line, "Save the vaccine doses for us Americans!" Stupidity and racial bias on display.
The virus did not come from Vietnam, and that country has one of the very lowest infection counts in the world! Just over 2500 cases in a population of 96 Milllion people!

One problem in today's world is everyone thinks they're brilliant, smarter than everyone else with no need to learn. I hope your daughter also witnessed somebody standing up for them??????????

Two posts removed, mine being one of them as I had replied before reading to the end where I saw that the thread had already made it's move into deeply debated current politics.

Posts removed, and lock in place. Both deleted posts, my reply included, had nothing to do with copyright our this case.