Hi there, I am curious to know others views on this. I attended a public ANZAC Day service in Perth, Western Australia yesterday morning. In total, approx 40,000 people attended the State War Memorial in the early morning.
After the service, where official wreaths and bouquets were laid, the public were allowed to place bouquets at the War Memorial and lots of people were looking at the flowers and reading the cards attached.
For context:
One in particular touched me and I photographed it, cropped it and put it up on my photo website and also put it and approx half a dozen favourites on a local website.
The webmaster of that site contacted me, asking if I knew the person who had 'signed' the card. I replied that I didn't, but felt that it was in the public domain and didn't see a problem with sharing it. He disagrees and has removed the photo. Fair enough, that's his perogative, I am just curious to see what others think and what you would do in similar circumstances.
The webmaster comments to me "I am actually quite surprised you don't agree with me here being a photographer, after all that letter has the same copyright/reproduction laws associated with it as one of your photographs do, even if you were to say, display your photographs in an exhibition or in a newspaper. Not that the legallities of it is the main issue to me, its a personal letter written by someone meant to be seen by a few thoughtful passerbys at an anzac ceromony, not to be read by anyone with a internet connection the world over."
Am I wrong here? Happy to be persuaded otherwise.
Here's the photo in question, with the 'offending' sections blurred:
Simon....
