Copyright battle over Obama picture

[wierdness]

skygod44 wrote in post #7306832
Since ... <very bad attitude snipped> ... dpreview!

[/wierdness]

I guess the 40th birthday explained it.

I'm calling Godwin's Law on this thread and Formosa's Law on myself. WTMKF

CliffordPhotography wrote in post #7307199
Im with the AP.
The few posts Ive read of people talking this fair act, and well I wouldnt mind.... Wait till it actually happens to you, and your attitude will change.

Happened to me in a minor way a few times, as I mentioned to LB a moment ago, but since I'd used up my creative opportunities with my photos susequently used by others, fair play to them. That's my own damn fault!

BillsBayou wrote in post #7307328
I guess the 40th birthday explained it.
I'm calling Godwin's Law on this thread and Formosa's Law on myself. WTMKF

There you go again! You just can't stop being rude can you?!
And you're not the OP, so why would you "call" anything on this thread?

[Shakes his "not mentally disturbed" head at the sheer arrogance of some people who can't keep things impersonal if it means they might lose an argument, be disagreed with, be shown up as "out of touch", etc.......]

btw guys, you heard that Fairey is now suing AP?

Fairey seems to think that it is appropriate to sue for copyright infringement when someone uses his work as inspiration....

http://www.boston.com …ey_obey_my_lawy​ers_1.html

Stealthy Ninja wrote in post #7300348
A dude once painted soup cans.

lololololol

Skygod44 said....Since it's my 40th birthday today, thought I'd jump back in from the fiery pit of "Anti-Derivative-Law Hell" and see what you boys have been talking about...


Happy Birthday....this thread is a great present...thats why i like to look at peoples pictures as opposed to virtual arguments...lol

Time to invoke Damkot's Law I think: Play nice, or don't play

René Damkot wrote in post #7309476
Time to invoke Damkot's Law I think: Play nice, or don't play

Me thinks me likes that Law the bestest of all the laws in the whole-wide world!

alt4852 wrote in post #7305685
i think most of us would agree to a certain extent that using another photographer's dialed in settings and "tripod-holes" is intellectual theft, but that is somehow more ok just because the imitator is there at the same time instead of going back at a later time.

Actually, I don't think that's theft. Poor form, maybe, but not theft. Nothing in intellectual property law of which I'm aware would preclude it. And I'd rather the imitator do it at the same time than coming back.

I sat in front of Delicate Arch and made this picture:

If he was looking at my painting and imitating what he saw, then yes. it was infringement. If he was looking at the original scene, then no. And if he's taking the original scene and putting it down, he can't help but impost his own interpretation, even if both of us are skilled members of the Photo-Realistic School.

Remember that you cannot protect a style or interpretation. All you can protect is the actual expression--the display itself. Thus, it matters where the accused infringer got his material. If he got it from my painting or photo, then it's copying. If he got it from the original, then the most he can be copying is my general style. And that is not protected by copyright.

In court, these things are usually hidden, even if they are known. So a jury has to make a judgment, based on the preponderance of the evidence. They will look at the image and the evidence describing the process used to obtain it. If the process suggests that a similar result is just happenstance, then there won't be an infringement finding.

My interpretation actually protects us from accidents. Many subjects are going to be photographed thousands of times, and the likelihood of two of those photographs being remarkably similar is very high. But there is no fault in this situation, because the copyright protects the expression. So it matters only where you got your material. Like I said before, we know when we are copying stuff. Photographing a photo is copying. Photographing a scene photographed by others, even trying to simulate another photographer's general style, is not copying. (Putting their name to it, on the other hand, is forgery and a whole different category of crime.)

How many artists have stood flowers on a table, lit it from the side, and then tried to emulate Rembrandt's style? Hundreds, if not thousands. Some did so with remarkable success. That is not infringement.

Rick "thinking folks are missing the distinction between copying and simulating" Denney

skygod44 wrote in post #7309600
Me thinks me likes that Law the bestest of all the laws in the whole-wide world!

Methinks you is a suckup.

alt4852 wrote in post #7312461
i've also run around delicate arch although i got there at like 7am to beat the mid-day heat when i went so mine doesn't look as nice as yours.

You were a little to the right, so you probably didn't see the three marks on the slickrock that said "Rick Denney's Tripod Went HERE. Everyone Else STAY AWAY!"

You're right that it's an extreme hypothetical that someone would be following someone else and trying to imitate everything they did. Someone using my spot right after me would have seen a different shadow line, for one thing. And given how long I had to wait for people not to be in the pic (the downside of doing it at sunset), they might have gotten a crowd shot instead. (I actually PP'd a leg out of one lower corner of my image, and in so doing can raise the whole silly issue of whether or not it's even a photograph.) I couldn't get as much of the bowl as you did, even though I wanted to, because of the people. I wanted to get a fisheye image, too, but couldn't see it with all those people there.

But even if a photographer got an identical shot by following my moves, it would be rude and maybe unethical but not, I don't think, illegal.

It's a little easier to see all this in other art forms. It's easy to see that nobody could achieve an identical work of fiction without having the original being copied in hand. It's easy to see that nobody will accidentally compose an identical work to a (still protected) Shostakovich symphony. But I might well play a jazz riff exactly the way Charlie Parker played it. In fact, I might be copying his style on purpose. Those in the know would think me "derivative", but only in the artistic sense, not the legal one. Was The Clash violating copyrights of The Ramones? No.

I could also take a Mozart symphony, make a few minor changes, and sell it as my edited version. Mozart's work is in the public domain and not protected by copyright. But nobody would buy it when they can get the original for free, and when my edits have so little value. If I put my name on it as the composer, then it would be a forgery, which, as I said, is a different crime.

One final point: There is no requirement in copyright law that the work be particularly creative or artistic. It just has to be original. That's original in the strict meaning of working from the subject, and not original in the artistic sense. Much of what is protected is purely technical with no artistic intention whatever. In fact, I can write a review of someone else's technical paper, where everything I describe is what they developed, and still copyright my review article. My review might sell 100 or 1000 times as many copies as their technical paper. It's still my writing, and I'm still in front of the subject I'm interpreting, which is his writing. My only risk is how much of his material I quote directly, and if that is little enough so as not to constitute a copy, then it's specifically allowed under Fair Use.

Just more stuff to think about. As I said, we know when we are copying another's work. Just don't do it, and we'll be fine.

Rick "realistic enough to know that specific cases don't necessarily provide useful guidance" Denney

i think this is an interesting subject, but i'll be out of state for the weekend and won't have internet access. hopefully someone else can continue this and see if our lovely forum here can ever reach a common consensus about this.

best regards to those i've been discussing this with. bugging out until monday, and this thread better not be locked when i get back!

Definitely NOT the photo that Fairey used: LINK HERE

Look closely to get the joke.

alt4852 wrote in post #7312461
...if it's not the matter of physically being at a location as someone stated, how can it be judged?...

From the examples I've seen of such suits, the problem arrises when there is clear evidence that the copying party has seen a published work and then gone out and reproduced it. Other cases involve potential buyers not liking the price and then going out to duplicate the work. Such cases tend to favor the origninal photographer. However, cases that favor the copying party are the result of significant differences so that a layman would not confuse the two photos as being the same.

BillsBayou wrote in post #7312840
However, cases that favor the copying party are the result of significant differences so that a layman would not confuse the two photos as being the same.

Do you honestly think that a layman would confuse the hope painting with the AP photograph and think that they're the same?

XterraJohn wrote in post #7313032
Do you honestly think that a layman would confuse the hope painting with the AP photograph and think that they're the same?

That is the point to me. I don't recognize the Fairey image as even being a photograph. It's a painting as far as I am concerned.

Hypocrisy is annoying but also irrelevant. The salient point is not "Is Fairey a jerk?". The question is if you can make a painting based on a photo and claim it as an original work. IMO the Fairey painting is disassociated far enough from the photo to be an original work.