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Copyright Matters - yes it does! To others in this sort of business - please write in with your experiences ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This page might seem to labour some points but the main purpose is to encourage readers to tell me if any webpage here appears to not set out proper acknowledgements. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. We all get caught out by our oversight occasionally and one example arose when I recently discovered two pictures of steam engines from the Blisworth ironstone mining works of the 1960s. The pictures were on a Flikr web page, totally out of context and lacking all text and any attribution. I "screen-grabbed" them and added them to the ironstone mining pages on the website. About a week later I was accused by a photographer of using without permission some of his pictures that were pretty well already displayed on appropriate websites. I immediately apologized with the excuse that I thought Flikr was an "open" website. Then I took them off this website. The photographer later stated he didn't mind the posting - apparently he trusted me enough to know that I would acknowledge him as the source, because he didn't mention it.Photographs carry with them a copyright, wherever they are, and that copyright may be
called to one's ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Another instance, which demonstrates how responsible professional people behave, was when four pictures were required for a new Blisworth website, recently started up. The webmaster made sure he knew who the copyright holders were before he posted the pictures and added a caption on the web-page as it was being built. On this website I have had to take pictures with
"unknown" copyright status. I try to be clear ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Another case, a recent one, involved an image from this site appearing without any acknowledgement on another website. My complaint was emailled thus: . . . does not permit you to take an image from the archive website without either a polite request or any acknowledgement to the website . . . . I request you lift it off, add an appropriate acknowledgement label as part of the image, etc. (9th October 2010) Reply, person 1: I kicked off reproducing here some extracts of the wording but one of the two people involved pointed out (see below) that their email was copyright to themselves - so, instead, I have to resort to a statement that reflects the intent of the email without quoting verbatim . . . we have not used any of your images recently and please note that the image in question can be obtained from another source where there was no mention of the photographer. In view of these points it is hoped you do not continue with this objection. And in reply further . . . I don't know where we found the image because we have forgotten. Actually, I thought this person was being a tad obnoxious, in the original form of words, so I continued: In your main reply you have of course, in your rush to get to the next thing you wanted to say, not realised that you have admitted to taking a picture without acknowledging its source. You have also missed an even more important point - I have told you where the image copyright lies and it matters not a jot where you claim to have found it and yet, still, you don't seem to realise the need to now acknowledge it. Of course you have my permission and approval to use the picture and I would have given that in the first place . . . etc Reply, person 2: Similarly paraphrased . . . we were not intending to infringe any copyright and so acted 'innocently' - in our future use of material we will be more careful I was told that an investigative Google search had been done but there was no mention to me of plausible access to the image from another source, ie. contra-indicating the declaration of person 1. As the question of acknowledgement was not mentioned, I had to put that back to them in another email. So, in reply further . . . we will decide soon what to do about that . . . Thus they maintained a slightly holier-than-thou air, though it is less apparent now in the paraphrasing. The next day the image reappeared briefly with a tiny label which was phrased as an obvious misdirection and not an acknowledgement at all and then was taken off for good. I derive a good deal of pleasure from operating this website but from this interaction what little pleasure or satisfaction that has obtained hardly fitted any normal description of a "Thanks". That's the rich tapestry . . . After a few months one of the two people who had replied to me noticed this particular posting and pointed out the fact that sent emails carry the copyright of the sender. Thus I learn a new point which does not seem to be observed by the news media - but then they have lawyers on tap. This person also made me aware that my wording was controversial and kindly offered to send me a replacement form of words - by email! I accepted and then wondered if I would receive an inbuilt copyright waiver that I would be obliged to disclose . . . What came through would have been a credit to Joe Friday ("Just the facts, Ma'am") in summarising the whole episode in just 129 words, compared to my 480 above, entirely without flavour as whitewash invariably is. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. A guy came through on the Parish Council website with a beef about one of his photographs of a railway scene being credited to the Roade History Society. We had a chat on the phone and it turned out that, even before getting round to printing them for himself, he had given a bunch of his negatives to a friend, years ago, and by a strange pathway a print had been obtained at Roade. I saw the print in an exhibition and expressed interest in a copy . . . After the picture had been shown here for 2 years, credited to the RHS it is now correctly credited to the photographer and his copyright is thus expressed. 5. next? |