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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."
...of these tech cases, and we might just see some legislative reform!
FLR
Firstly, IANAL also, but the way I've read this ruling, I see a potentially useful application of it.
/.-ing of various smaller sites, could lead to (hopefully) /. mirroring news stories if they feel the server could go down.
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
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...
This is a case where I can see both points of view. As a consumer, I very much like the availability of complete collections of periodicals in electronic form. (I have the complete Mad Magazine CD-ROM set, for instance.) A ruling that freelance contributors have to give permission and get royalties on such a republication would make it nearly impossible to publish such a thing for magazines that go back many decades unless their contents were entirely "work for hire" owned by the publisher; even if they could afford all the royalties (which would make the collections exorbitantly expensive), the recordkeeping would be a nightmare, and they probably don't even know how to get in contact with freelancers or their heirs from long ago (but due to the copyright term extension, things stay copyrighted as long as 95 years or more now).
On the other hand, if I were a creator of material published on such a magazine, I'd want to be properly compensated if it became part of a lucratively-marketed collected work; I'd probably have been paid a relatively small amount in the first place based on its use being ephemeral (in the context of a periodical) rather than the larger amount I'd expect for permanent rights to something that would remain in print.
This issue is really one which needs to be addressed via contract, and it probably is for new freelance material these days now that publishers have such uses in mind and probably have a clause specifically about them. This, however, doesn't settle the issues regarding past material created before either the creator or the publisher had any idea of modern electronic uses, hence all the litigation. Similar issues occur with DVD collections of TV series, where it's often in doubt who requires permission and compensation for everything from actors' residuals to music rights.
--Dan
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Whether it's printed on Dead Trees(tm) or pitted into polycarbonate discs, as long as it's the same content, then they're just publishing the magazine.
So, as long as it is:
- same content
- same publisher (ie the one who's already paid for the right to publish)
The fact that it's purely a different physical medium is totally irrelevant.--------
So back to your point about mirroring websites.... Well, this all centers around an existing right-to-publish. Do you have that? If so , then sure, mirror the website. If not, they you're in flagrant breach of copyright, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
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.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
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.)