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CBS Sues Man For Copyright Over Screenshots of 59-year-old TV Show (arstechnica.com)
CBS has sued a photographer for copyright infringement for publishing a still image from a 59-year-old television show. From a report: The lawsuit against New York photojournalist Jon Tannen, filed on Friday, is essentially a retaliatory strike. Tannen sued CBS Interactive in February, claiming that the online division of CBS had used two of his photographs without permission. Now, CBS has sued Tannen back, claiming that he "hypocritically" used CBS' intellectual property "while simultaneously bringing suit against Plaintiff's sister company, CBS Interactive Inc., claiming it had violated his own copyright." "Without any license or authorization from Plaintiff, Defendant has copied and published via social media platforms images copied from the Dooley Surrenders episode of GUNSMOKE," write CBS lawyers. CBS is asking for $150,000 in damages for willful infringement.
screenshots are not photos
They are reproductions of frames from somebody's film or video production. Copyright law is there to prevent people from reproducing your work in whole or in part without your permission. A screen shot is a reproduction of part of the work. How are you not getting this?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How can it be the same?
Because reproducing someone else's work in whole or in part is ... reproducing someone else's work in whole or in part. This isn't complicated. How are you not getting that?
They used his photos - a photo is an entire work
Nearly every published image has been cropped. Are you saying that when National Geographic takes a landscape-oriented photo from a photographer, and crops it down to the portrait-orientation to fit on the cover of their magazine, they no longer owe the photographer anything because they didn't use the entire photograph? Are you even listening to yourself?
a screen shot is not an entire work
Right. Just like reproducing a chapter of an author's novel, or the first act of a playwrite's play isn't the "entire work" but is very much subject to copyright law.
subject to fair use
You don't even know what that phrase means.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.