Court Ruling Limits Copyright Claims

Spamicles writes "A federal appellate panel in Atlanta has reversed its circuit's 6-year-old opinion in a major copyright case, declaring the ruling's mandate on behalf of freelance photographers to be "moot." Until now, publishers could be forced to share with freelancers whenever they reproduce and sell those freelancers' previously published works in merchandise designed for computer access. The new ruling says that reproduction on a CD or other media is not a new use of formerly published issues. The full court decision (pdf) is available online, and Law.com has an analysis of the ruling's repercussions."

Comments

One more nail...

[mcmonkey]

...in the coffin for the argument that these laws and regulations protect creators and innovators.

We've seen it with RIAA and MPAA cases, and here it is again. The system is being rigged in favor of large corporate distributors and against the people who actually create the content.

Re:What about Live Audio CDs

[MojoRilla]

What about audio CDs of previously performed concerts?

This is very different. This is a case there the photographer already got paid for distribution rights by National Geographic, and his work was being distributed in magazine format. He sued because they started distributing the magazines in digital format. This ruling says that the photographer isn't entitled to additional royalties. So this appears to say format shifting for publishers is OK.

In the case of CDs of previously performed concerts, the musician was never paid for distribution of the material. You can argue that he was paid for the live performance, but live performace of a work and distributing that work in recorded format seem totally different. This is much closer to a record company distributing a bands work on a CD, and later on a memory stick. This would argue that the same contract applies, because it is the same work.

One case where Copyright would be good

[ironwill96]

This is a rather silly case if I'm understanding the article correctly, but IANAL. It seems that the photographers are being screwed over by the court interpreting a Supreme Court Decision from 2001 (which GAVE more rights to freelance newspaper writers) in such a manner as to now prohibit the photographers from pursuing claims related to the "repurposing" of their content into anthologies etc.

In the 2001 decision the Supreme Court rejected the idea that paper/printed material being put onto microfilm was a valid analaogy to online databases of the same data that were indexed and searchable or CDs etc. Now the photographers are being told that the National Geographic can use their content however the heck they want even though it wasn't spelled out in the original contract and also doesn't count as a "revision" or "re-publish" of an issue?!?

I think the court is off their rocker, hopefully Greenburg will appeal to the Supreme Court to clarify this issue once and for all.

Summary because I think one is needed

[CaptainPatent]

Long story short:

A long time ago (6 years) the supreme court ruled that if a company wishes to reproduce works done by freelance photographers, they should inform and pay them for royalties for the new use

Much more recently the supreme court changed its own decision and said that if the work was a freelance production that if the company decided to reproduce it for a similar cause they don't need to (inform/ask permission/pay) the photographer.

Essentially they redefined what is a similar use of a photograph. It used to be that if they wanted to do anything but reprint the old article or ad (or whatever the picture was involved in) they needed to make it crystal clear their new intention and give the photographer their due.

In a lot of senses, this is much like converting from DRM to non-DRM for the corperations that use freelance in that they don't have to induce a pay-per-use scheme and instead pay once for rights to the photo. While photographers may now be paid less frequently (probably once) for an individual work, they will probably be able to negotiate a higher price under the new scheme. So there is pro and con to this decision.