Ocasionally I see posts where one poster may accuse persons unknown of "copying my pictures and selling them on .....". Someone help me to understand what all the fuss is about. Is there that much money to be made selling old pictures? Thanks,
I can't speak for everyone on this topic, as opinions are widely diverse. Here's our take: We spend a lot of time and money hunting down collections of old photos and especially negatives. Then we pay good money for them. By buying the negatives, the intellectual property that is the image is now ours. We then spend between $5 - $18 per image in labor and equipment to digitize, correct, and repair the images as well as do research to try to determine exactly when and where the image was taken. U.S. Copyright law provides that we, as owners of the negative and a newly created digital image of it, are now entitled to a new Copyright on that digital image, taking it out of the public domain. The law is done that way to help preserve photo negatives that otherwise would continue to deteriorate and ultimately turn to dust, much as cars go through that process of returning to rust over time. In order to keep our Copyrights, we must enforce them, or lose the image back to public domain due to "lack of proactive enforcement". If we don't try to keep our Copyrighted materials from being duplicated in an unauthorized manner, our investment goes away. This is the same criteria used in patents and trademarks. We do this to help preserve the images, help insure they are still around in 50 years, and to also make them available to the community for research. In fact, we're just strating to put up on our website a new section called "Restoration References", which will be comprised only of photos acquired from a defunct Detroit agency that used to do a lot of advertising, merchandising, and training photography for the car manufacturers. One example of that archive is an extensive set of engineering photos on the Corvair, and another on the Corvette. There are also some styling drawings of various other Chevrolets including the 1959 models. That section will continue to grow over coming months. Had we not invested over $50,000 to buy the entire archive, it would have gone to the recycler as waste. In reality, it's not all that much different than with all the other artists in the world. Let's say you were a painter, and did a great oil paiinting. Then somebody else took and made prints of the painting and sold them, without authorization from you. Same deal. Do we make money selling these prints? Yes, otherwise we couldn't stay in business. But the issue of fighting unauthorized use is more about Copyright protection than about lost revenues. I know this is a rather long answer to your question, but the field of intellectual property Copyrights is just coming of age in dealing with digital media, and it's complex. Bet you're glad you asked?
Excellent response! I encounter so many people (even professionals) who think that anything posted online is now "public domain" and ask me to "just get something off the web". Unless you took the photo yourself (and have the car owner's or person's permission to use it) it's private property. The big issue is, are you trying to "gain" something from the use of the image. If you show pics, on your own site or even on other sites, you shot at a rod run, it's not a financial gain. If you make a poster for sale or use it in marketing, it's a "gain" and not legal. Doesn't have to be just money either. Exceptions: 1. Almost every national rod show entry form has text saying that your car's image may be used by the pomotor, or the vendors for future promotional or marketing purposes. 2. If you "borrow" non-professional shots from another site or posting and you are not trying to "gain" from it then you probably won't get any heat. 3. Old photos from sites like Plan9 or ANY pro/watermarked shots are copywritten and should never be used for any purpose without permission and/or fees. It's their living.
Thanks for the clear explanation. I can understand your issues after investing that much money in old photos and negatives. As a side question, why did you have to pay 50 grand for something that was going to the recyler as waste?
A while back I saw on ebay some "Vintage Camper placemats" being sold with pictures of MY '48 Pontiac convertible and '48 Spartan trailer as the centerpiece photo. The picture was one taken by photographer and author Doug Kiester, and was evidently lifted from his website. I was steamed because our car and trailer is recogniseable, and I didn't want anyone thinking that it was me selling these cheezy, laminated photocopied photos, (copyrighted no less) on ebay. I had no money intrest at stake, but a reputation in the small vintage trailer world. I contacted the seller, ebay, Mr. Kiester, and the sale was removed immediately. Brian
OK you have had decent explaination of the legal aspect of the photo issue. There is a simpler way to look at it. Suppose you are making your living producing a product and someone steals that product calls it his own and uses it to make his living. How would you feel about it? A picture isn't any different than a t shirt or an object of art or even car parts. Stolen is stolen, do you really know anyone that can tolerate a thief?
I've often wondered about the Plan 9 site, since the material they post, old advertisements, may technically still be the property of the company that put out the ad to begin with, if the company is still in existence (GM or Chrysler automotive ads for example). How can they copyright an image that isn't theirs, in the strictest legal sense? How does that work? If I were to try and copyright a "Coke" ad from my collection, I'd expect the folks at Coke would have something to say about that. Just wondering.
This video should give you an idea of what can happen, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, when you post your photos online and they manage to slip from your control. http://vimeo.com/20718237 Sometimes it's just a minor infraction. But pursuing legal action in another country can often be difficult if not impossible, regardless of how deep your pockets are.
Sometimes it easy to think "come on, whats the big deal? its only being used for...." or wonder why someone like George Lucas goes after some tiny company for making a laser pointer that looks SORT of like a light saber.... BUT as pointed out in the first response... If you dont make effort to ENFORCE your copyright, or patent... you will LOSE the legal protection!!! So the BIG guys have to go after everyone... even the little guy!
As someone who makes their living selling both t-shirts and photography I wanted to say thanks for the great post!
As a professional photographer for over 25 years I have been on both sides of this "argument" 1. IF YOU took the photo or image is is automaticly your property and is copyrighted. You do not have to file papers. 2. If you BOUGHT copyrighted images, you have NO rights to the copyright and cannot copy them to use for finanicial gains. You will have to obtain permission from the person or company that holds the copyright to use them. This was found on a search on a law site: Q: If an photo is purchased at an auction or ebay does the buyer have rights to the copyright. A:He does not automatically, by virtue of his purchase, have any intellectual property rights relating to the pictures. What he has is the right to possess (and resell) the specific copy of the picture that he bought. Without ownership of the intellectual property rights, such as the copyright, he could not put them on the internet, he could not make copies, and he could not use them in advertising, other than in an advertisement for the sale of the copy of the picture itself. If the pictures are extremely old, he could try to check back to see if the rights to the pictures have expired. But that’s difficult, and involves tracing the pictures back to their source… and that source may have sold or assigned those rights to someone else…
I figured someone would catch that! We bought an entire archive from this specific agency as it was closing its doors. We found out about it because they had about 10,000 beauty shots of cars that they wanted us to buy. That was all they originally thought were valuable, and were going to scrap the rest, over 100,000 pieces. We took a look at the entire archive, which has some of the best engineering photos, documenting things like brakes, cooling systems, wiper arrangements, and designer drawings, stuff we feel should be preserved for folks like HAMBers for the future. We weren't really interested in their beauty shots, as we have a large selection of those already. But, in order to get what we wanted, we had to buy the whole collection, and get them to negotiate with us for the whole package. As soon as they found out what we were really after, it got "somewhat" more expensive. Add in transporting two tractor trailer loads of stuff from Detroit to vegas, plus all the associated labor costs, and we're well over $50K. In every archive we buy, there are photos that we can't or won't use... they are degraded beyond repair, they are outtakes, they have children in them from whom we can't get releases, etc. So your cost per usable image goes up. But, it's extremely difficult to find documented, genuine, shots of this stuff as it was built and designed by the factory. We've got some original Oldsmobile shots going up in a few days that are so genune they show the three or four different wheel covers the factory was considering before they authorized the car for production. To a car guy, it's real interesting stuff! As some others here have said, intellectual property copyright laws are unique. In our case, the key is not only to have the photo, but also the negatives. That's why the agencies stuff was so valuable to us, because each photo had the original negatives with it. We license a lot of our stuff for use by publishers and television. You've seen a bunch of our stuff in books, manuals, on the History Channel, and in a few chain restaurants. Because it's all "of the era", we hope that when you saw it you just thought it was a cool old photo hat somebody found at a garage sale or up in somebody's attic. Just know it took a lot to get there!
Ricks exactly right here. We have sold a number of antique photo prints on eBay and other sites over the years, either prints that were duplicates, or that we did not have negatives for. Those prints are always sold "For collector use only. No Rights transfer with this photo. No right to duplicate,license, use in commerce, or for any other than prive use are included with this sale." Sourcing the rights that go with photos is a tough thing, even when the photos are contemporary. Try it yourself: Next time you're at a wedding, ask the bride who owns her wedding pictures. Then ask the photographer. In many / most cases, you'll get two very different answers!
Again, it comes back to the negatives in most cases. We have a lot of old GM advertising that we have digitally copyrighted, because when we bought the archive I spoke of above, it had a large number of the ad slicks in negative format, and the slicks carried the copyright of the agancy, not GM. That was the way it was usually done back in the day, the agencies owned their work and then allowed the client use it. GM and Chrysler, for example, never really enforced their trademarks, copyrights, and even some patents until well into the 1980's. Prior to that, toy companies, clothing companies, etc. were pretty much free to do what they wanted with the logos, designs, taglines, etc., provided it wasn't obscene or otherwise degrading. The manufacturers pretty much left it alone because they thoughht of it as free advertising. Sometime in the mid '80's, some lawyer started seeing the intrinsic value in intellectual property and everything changed. The stuff thta was done prior to that time, where copyrights and trademarks had flowed into the public domain, are what we have with negatives, and what we have been granted new copyrights to. As for Coke, that's a different story. They were among the first to agressively protect their trademarks, especially towards competitors.
Can we get you to post this on every internet website there is? Would that we could be so direct! You are exactly right... please keep spreading the word!!
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