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Court Rules Against Photographers in Copyright Suit
An anonymous reader writes "Photo District News Online reports a Federal District Court in NY says that republishing Magazine content on a CD is the same as republishing the magazine itself. Photographers claim they should recieve additional compensation for images published on the CD that were published in the orginal magazine articles. IANAL but there is some additional interesting case history in the article as well."
RTFA, it doesn't say anything like that.
Why? Because they get nothing out of this, instead of the extra paymanets they were asking? From the article:
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
I own the work in question. My wonderful wife bought it for me a few Christmases back. It is basically just a set of jpgs, one per page, with an electronic index and table of contents thrown over the top.
The cake is a pie
It's rare for photogs to simply sign over their copyrights to images they've created; instead their photos are likely covered under a use agreement, which very specifically states what the photos are to be used for. It may have been that these guys weren't specific enough in their paperwork.
This ruling will go through the photo community like an earthquake if not reviewed or overturned; pro photogs are paranoid^H^H^H very protective of misuse of their images, and rightly so (it's their livelihood, after all).
Disclaimer: IANAL... I have talked to pro photogs who outline the procedure they go through when copyrighting and distributing an image.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Arguing that the CD is the same as the magazine is akin to saying since my subscription entitles me to all issues of the magazine for a certain period, I am owed the CD because it is no different than the magazine and contains the issues that covers my subscription - something I think NGS would disagree with and point out the Cd is a different beast.
Not at all. Suppose NG were to publish their magazine in paperback and hardback format every month: I find it hard to believe someone could argue that the hardback format counted as a new work, yet clearly your subscription to one format of the magazine wouldn't entitle you to free copies of the other format. In the same way, why should your subscription to the existing dead-tree format magazine entitle you to the CD version? For my money, so long as the content (editiorials, articles, photos) is the same then it's the same magazine. Just because they bundle a swiss-army knife with one version or some search tools with another version shouldn't suddenly make the two versions new publications.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
It occurred to me while reading this article that this isn't all that different (conceptually) from the RIAA stink over streaming media on the internet.
The medium is different, but the content is the same. Why should a radio station pay AGAIN and MORE to retransmit the same content on a different media? Why should the rates be higher over the wire vs. over the air? Conceptually, you could intercept the stream and record it straight to disk. So what? I did that as a kid with my portable stereo in my bedroom.
IANAL, but it looks like the exact same concept. I am inclined to agree with the ruling. BUT - as an earlier poster mentioned, the courts do seem to have a nasty habit of siding with the corporations on these issues.
As a semi-professional photographer, I'm still working up to getting things published repeatedly. But in those few cases where I have been published (Billboard, Boston Globe, among others), I'm getting tired of 1. my photos not being credited and 2. having my credit actually photoshopped out of the picture! The worst part is that when I do get credited properly, the photo is printed like ass.
It's my opinion that the publications are definitely doing all they can to screw the working photographers, from little guys like me to the titans like Nachtwey and McCurry.
What about the case where Random House thought they had the rights to publsh works in electronic media (based upon older contracts which indicated the rights to publish books but didn't know about electronic ebooks) and thus sought to get an injunction to halt Rosetta Books ( an epublisher) from publishing ebooks of those same titles via rights Rosetta Books purchased from the authors. The court (in New York State) ruled in favour of the authors.
1 3
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/e-books/748
Interestingly, the injunction was denied because Random House failed to show how there would be irreparable harm, but also, the judge believed that they would fail on the merits of their case. In short, he ruled that the rights to the works in question were held by the authors and that only those specific rights given to Random House were those applying to 'books' i.e. paper-based books. Advances in technology which opened new media, caused new 'rights' to be held by the authors, and not the publishing company which had previously purchased the rights to those same works.
Random House argued it placed an unreasonable burden to have to go back over all those old contracts and renegotiate new contracts based upon new technologies as they developed, etc. but the judge was unsympathetic, indicating that the fact that Rosetta Books had pursued negotiations with the authors (or their estates) to purchase these rights, indicated the authors had asserted their authority over their own rights and works in question.
Also interesting, was that Kurt Vonnegut was involved incidentally as Rosetta Books had purchased rights to his books, even though he doesn't like ebooks.
This ruling was upheld upon appeal.
http://patenting-art.com/clients/entlawrp.htm
I realise that this case involved interpretation of an existing contract, and it only applies to Random House because other publishers' contracts may be defined differently (and most certainly the language of those contracts may have changed after this case) but what if any, implications would it have in this case?
(Sorry the URLs aren't links, but I'm a bastard and prefer plain text.)
FYI and a bit OT:
The Wayback Machine
Enter a website into its search engine and it will pull up snapshots of the website from several time periods. Looks like they've been getting into some other media, too, since last I looked.
SharkJumper
In fact, American Heritage used to do that very same thing! And you're exactly right, you could subscribe to one or the other, or both, if you wanted. I don't know, however, if there was any differentiation between the formats when it came to paying the authors, though.
Just because they bundle a swiss-army knife with one version or some search tools with another version shouldn't suddenly make the two versions new publications.
Besides, adding a search engine to a CD doesn't seem much different than publishing an annual index like many scholarly (and a few not-so-scholarly) periodicals do!
-h-
The problem is in reproducability.
You can do a lot of things to that building, but under today's physics laws, short of building a second (employing a carpenter), there's no way to duplicate that building. The work of that carpenter (and of the field of carpentry) is protected by the virtue of the physical nature of the output.
A photo, however, can be easily reproduced en masse, with very little effort on the part of the copier. In order for the photographer (and the photographic profession) to maintain a decent livelyhood, a measure of control exists to prevent gratuitious reselling. Otherwise, the image's resellers would reap disproportionate profits on their simple function of running a printing press all day, while the person responsible for the creative content would get little-to-nothing.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Yes. Mozilla does this, but so does every other browser I have ever used. In IE, it is bound to ctrl+wheel, just like in every single MS product available. In Opera, it resizes images too, which makes for better layout, usually. Netscape has it bound by default to Ctrl +/-
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Settled out of court; details at:
8 -2 1/news_feat.html
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2001-0
Disney's most creative employees these days are in legal, claiming to only owe royalties for selling soundtracks, not the full movie.
http://www.savedisney.com
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman