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."

Comments

Interesting Use of this ruling - Mirrors

[RussHart]

Firstly, IANAL also, but the way I've read this ruling, I see a potentially useful application of it.

If it is not a breach of copyright to re-publish electronically such as on CD, then that could be taken to mean that mirrors of sites would not be subject to copyright issues - which here, considering the /.-ing of various smaller sites, could lead to (hopefully) /. mirroring news stories if they feel the server could go down.

Only problem I see is that National Geographic had paid copyrights for all of the images once alredy, whereas nothing of the sort will have happened if this appliation...

I'm biased on this subject

[kfg]

I'm a third generation photographer. I do mostly art photography in B&W, but my mother is a travel photographer who specializes in just the sort of cutural/anthroplogical images that are likely to appear in NG (although that's one place she hasn't actually been published).

I think this a good ruling. New technologies don't inherently create new copywrite issues at law. A CD republication is just a republication and the current trend to get all weird about it being a digital republication is a bit daft.

We like taking pictures. We sell them. We're perfectly willing to make more money by selling new photographs. The right to publish and republish is the thing the magazine publishers gives us money for. It's a fair deal.

And the added profits obtainable by republication makes the purchase of such photographs more of a viable commercial venture for the publisher in the first place.

On the whole I think a client base with loose purse strings is preferable to one who resents opening it up.

Not to mention the fact that it makes a better deal for the consumer as well, which can only help everyone in the long run.

KFG

This judge also ruled against 2600 in DMCA case

[loggia]

US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan also presided over the 2600 magazine DMCA case, where he famously (and ridiculously) ruled that 2600 could not published the DeCSS code or even link to it.

Anyone seeing a pattern hear (read: "Hi I am Lewis Kaplan and I love big corporations.")

Supreme Court, Here We Come

[Ray Radlein]

I agree with the article's comment that a Supreme Court appeal is almost inevitable, given the apparent contradiction between this decision and New York Times v. Tasini. The judge made some effort to create space between his ruling and Tasini, but I just don't really see it -- and I especially don't see any way of formulating a consistent policy which is capable of distinguishing between the two different rulings on any kind of general basis.

I think that this one's going straight to the Supreme Court, and I think it's likely that Tasini will prevail, and that this decision will be overturned.

On the other hand, as time goes by, this will make less and less of a difference: In the wake of Tasini (indeed, even before Tasini), publishers have been changing their freelance contract terms to specifically include inclusion in future media collections. The main impact of these decisions, one way or the other, will continue to be on publications with considerable libraries of back issues which have some potential commercial value -- like National Geographic and The New York Times, of course, but also Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Time and Life, The New Yorker, and a few others (some of which may already have had freelance contracts structured in a sufficiently different way to leave them already in the clear, of course).

Jungle Book

[t0ny]

This issue came up in a similiar form a while ago, and I think its still being litigated.

The estate of the guy that composed the music in Disney's Jungle Book sued Disney for not paying out royalties on the VHS, DVDs, CDs, etc, which were put out with that music. Disney's stance is that, since the contract did not specify VHS, DVD, CDs, etc, they are not obligated to pay royalties on anything but the film itself.

Somebody can score some easy karma by providing a link- Im to lazy to use google at the moment.

Re:Jungle Book

[angel'o'sphere]

Interesting.

In Europe its just thr other way around. If you get the right to "use" musik of a certain author in the cinema, you have no rights to use it in VHS, DVD etc. And you not only have to pay royalities, no, its a copy right violation to distribute his music with out a suiteable contract.

Regarding the Magazine its probably a question in USA: was it *content* from the original magazin, or was it the *original* magazine, only publiched in a different way? If that was a case it might give a dispute in europe as well. But in general our terms of authors rights are quite clear, copy rights are granted for a certein work in combination with a certain media.

Copyright law itself covers the case that if new distribution ways are discovered(DVD/internet) the original contract does not extend to those.

Further more it covers that an author ha a right to get a reasonable compensation. So if a smal unknown band makes a 4 minute intro track to a movi and that ovie ges faous, the band has the right to get a suitable extra compensation for publishing records/CDs with that title.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Jungle Book

[t0ny]

I guess I needed to make myself clearer. From what I read, it seems like yes, indeed, Disney would likely be paying past royalties to the estate of the musician (he did have a royalty contract; just because it omitted to mention media which was not known at the time likely doesnt negate that agreement).

Disney is TRYING to say that, since the media is not mentioned, they dont have to pay. But common law generally goes against the writer of the contract, hence, its unlikely they will win with that arguement.

Ok, I poked around google and found this, which should bring a few actual facts to the discussion. Apparently the case was settled; Disney probably noticed they didnt have a chance of winning. Here is a quote of a key part, in case anyone doesnt feel like clicking (it is a short article, however)-

In 1999, Louis Prima's wife, Gia, sued Walt Disney for what she claimed were unpaid royalties stemming from Prima voicing King Louie and singing in The Jungle Book. Prima signed a contract with Walt Disney Productions in 1965, Jim Hill reports, which gave him $1500 a day for every day he did voice work on the feature film (his guaranteed minimum was $7500). Prima was also supposed to receive royalties from the sale of recordings from the The Jungle Book recordings.

So the issue concerned music sung by the "King Louie" character. So Disney, being the cheap, evil corporation they have become, decided to scrap the character in order to not have to pay royalties (pretty silly, IMO).