I woke up this morning and got a very interesting email from a visitor on this blog, signed by Mr or Mrs X.
It is always nice to have your feed back and that’s why I have activated the comment feature on each post.
I didn’t have a comment on the post but actually an email so I try to answer to the email here for the interest of all.
The email mentioned about a post on this blog, related to PMA 09.
Quote from Mr/Mrs X:
“I was very surprised to see you publishing other people images, from PMA, on your site. You are clearly breaching their copy right, you aren’t even citing the photographers.”
Well, this is a very good point but in a wrong context. PMA is a trade show where manufacturers and vendors come to sell their products and services. Visitors come to the show with their cameras and take photos. It is clearly allowed for visitors to take as many photos of whatever they’d like during and within the show.
And one can easily see that I have watermarked the images, taken by me, with my email address. These photos are shown here in a documentary way to describe the day.
It is clear that there is no breach of copyright when I took photos of displayed award-winning photographs from peers photographers. Just a reminder that during PMA 09, there was also APPA 2009 which is AIPP Australian Professional Photography Awards.
The judging was a open process and everyone was welcome to attend.
Prints from pro photographers came from around the world to enter the prints awards and needless to say that in a competition, they have to be anonymous.
Quote from teh same email:
“While an argument could be made that the photos you’ve taken of multiple images are for the purposes of review, there are two instances where you’ve simply published photos of someone else work, without referencing them and I’d be fairly certain without any sort of license from them to do so, and that is a clear case of copyright breach. I just thought you’d like to know.”
Once again I thank the author for this remark but will insist on the fact that prints are anonymous and I did give back credit for their respective (anonymous) authors. I have also put credits and authors of the prints if they were present on the spot as per these photos:
I also got emails and requests from the awards winners to use these photos for their own blogs, which of course I granted without hesitation.
And there are those that I really liked and feel they deserve their prices and without knowing the authors’ names, I put them up here to share with the community, giving back the credits to the anonymous authors.
I am still looking for the name of the authors of these two prints above. Unfortunately APPA 09 results only display Gold Awards winners but will update this page as soon as the list of winners will be published in the Canon APPA 09 book.
If you happen to know the authors, let me know so I can add some credits. At the mean time I have no claims to be the author of the prints but I am the author of these photos (of, and not, the prints, that is).
Quote:
“I write not to be rude but because I take copyright seriously, I’ve had my breached a few times, and you seem to takes your own seriously so I thought I would let you know.
Regards”
Thank you, X, very much for your email. As you may notice that no copyright breach have happened and I really appreciate your time in visiting my blog and also for your email.
Kind regards.
Thierry
If you need to see more and give your opinion, jump to the article here (http://nomadphotography.com.au/blog/2009/06/canon_appa_2009/)
Feel free to leave a comment to express your opinion, in the box below.
Find out more about the winners of APPA 2009 here.
Hi it is me again, X, and to be honest you really don’t know copyright law. The last 2 images you published are clear breaches of copyright. If someone produces an image, that is not a private commission the photographer is automatically granted copyright in the production of the image. It is a breach of Copyright for anyone to publish that image without their approval/license.
As I said for all the other images an argument could be made for review/documentation, but those last two are a clear breach on your behalf. Not knowing who took the photo does not give you the right to publish it – And this is in fact an issue that has caused huge controversy in the US with the Orphan Works Bill that has attempted to be passed.
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/
http://orphanworks.blogspot.com/
A law that is basically seen by artists rights advocates as one designed to give big corporate entities the ability to infringe on individuals copyright because of prohibitive finical and reporting constraints that would be imposed to protect and ensure their copyright (a very scary notion for any one concerned with copyright issues, and yes this is an issue for Australia because concerns are that such a law in the US would give US companies the right to breach international copyrights).
Such a law is however not in place and thus an argument that I don’t know who produced the image is not a valid one for publishing someone else work. The 2 photographers in question maybe more than happy for you to post their images, and they may not be, however your current publication of those images is a breach of copyright.
Regards,
X
Thank you again X for your comment. It is obviously no commercial purpose here for this post.
I am still looking for the authors of the two last prints to put their names here.
They will be immediately removed if requested by the owners.
Regards
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