Non-Copied Photo Is Ruled Copyright Infringement 657
An anonymous reader writes "A UK judge ruled that a photograph inspired by another photograph, but clearly different from it, infringes the original photo's copyright. The two photographs were shot in the same location, have the same subject, and use the same distinctive post-processing treatment. However, the angle and composition are different. From the article: '[The judge] said a difficult decision hinged on a "qualitative assessment of the reproduced elements." He defined Fielder's image a "photographic work," as distinct from a simply a photograph, in that "its appearance is the product of deliberate choices and also deliberate manipulations by the author," and concluded that those aspects had been copied.'"
Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" (Score:5, Interesting)
Apples and oranges. As pointed out below by someone else, photos are barely copyright-able at all, because they're simply a recording of something. Your example of Snoopy is something entirely different. Furthermore, even in derivative works fair use generally applies, meaning it's still OK.. The main reason you can't reproduce things like Snoopy is because they're trademarked.
Re:Fine all the tourists. (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought common practice was to arrest them on terrorism charges and hold them until they're no longer interesting.
Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" (Score:5, Interesting)
A derivative work is taking something and changing it, like translating it into a different lanugage or creating an abridged version. Taking ideas, and creating something that is stylisticlly similar is called art. All of the impressionists saw what monet could do with a few tubes of paint and what looked like sloppy brush strokes and created similar work. The heavy metal bands listed to steppenwolf singing about "heavy metal thunder" with loud and distorted guitars, and thought they could make something even louder. Such is art.
Besides making a photograph mostly black and white except for a single object isn't exactly creative. The idea goes back to the days of the daguerreotype when peoples faces where hand tinted.
What about Schindler's list? (Score:4, Interesting)
Everything was black and white except for that one girl with the red dress.
Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fine all the tourists. (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_claims [wikipedia.org]
Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" (Score:5, Interesting)
>But then you can't copyright books; books are just ideas that are written down
Bullshit, a book is an EXPRESSION of an idea. What you can't copyright is somebody writing a book with a similar plot and characters.
Or do you think every vampire book after Bram Stoker's Dracula violates copyright ? As much as I'm in favor of banning Twilight -that is NOT the way to do it.
>If you duplicate a painting by being extremely close to it as much as possible, in oil instead of latex, isn't that violating copyright?
No, it isn't. In fact it's a required practice in artschool to learn to paint "like the masters" in this manner. Of course if you then claim your version IS the original you are guilty of a crime and that crime has nothing to do with copyright, that crime is "fraud".
>These two photographs are much the same, the second is clearly trying to copy the fundamentals of the original
So what ? Every photographer looks at his favorite photographers and try to reproduce their fundamentals, it's how we learn. The the better ones take what they learned, mix it in with other lessons from other masters and some of their own ideas and come up with something unique. Most of them would love nothing more than to think that some day, some other young photographer will study their photos and try to replicate their techniques. So common is this that some of the more well-known processing styles of famous photographers are built into image processing programs like Gimp and Photoshop so that photographers can see how their pictures would have looked with the same effects applied (or even use them with those effects).
The style of "one item in color" is not original in the least, it's a fundamental archetype in photography. One of the basic styles every photographer learns early on because it's so powerful. I've used it for portraiture years ago, and I never had any illusions that the idea was original - but I could try to be original in my expression of it. In fact the book "Gimp for photographers" includes a chapter teaching exactly this technique as the author considers it a vital skill every photographer OUGHT to have !
Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" (Score:5, Interesting)
And amazingly, we seem to be returning to the patronage model.
Unless you were an artisan (potter, blacksmith, etc.) the masses couldn't really afford things like paintings or sculptures. The royalty, wealthy, and churches ended up paying these men and women for their services.
Nowadays, we have a similar situation where people are acting as artists and performers and leaving out a digital chip jar. Now the whole world are the patrons. The model has been very successful if you have a quality enough product - just look at all the webcomics where people live 100% off of the donations they receive, or the ones who segue into merchandising.
Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" (Score:4, Interesting)
To me, at least, the correct argument is that copycats profiting off your work that you shared freely is bs.
Why? If you think everyone shold just share everything freely, how can you stop someone from using that to make money? That's right, you'd have to have copyright laws of some description.
Just because the US has decided to allow Mickey Fucking Mouse to be copyrighted until the eventual heat death of the universe doesn't mean that the whole idea of copyright is wrong.