FWIW, from what I read about that artist who “changed” other people’s Instagram pics, Richard Prince, all the instagram-famous celebs need to do is take a photo of the photo with their phone, add a filter and a caption as part of the photo (not as text added to the post), and they own the copyright. Possibly they don’t even need to take the photo with their phone, just add the filter and/or the caption.
Change the photo in some way, even if it’s still recognisably the original photo, and it’s officially yours.
Dua Lipa is probably on the hook for this one. For the next ones, she could put “hey I’m being papped! Happy flights everyone!” or whatever as an embedded caption, possibly go to “adjust” and sharpen it a bit just to be on the safe side, and she’d own the copyright.
How can you not remember posts you made less than 3 months ago?
In that thread you couldn’t seem to grasp that not all violations of law are actual “crimes”, and not all arrestable offenses are actual crimes.
This thread is no different. The facts have been explained to you and either you just don’t get it or you don’t like how it is. But, to beat a dumb cliché to death, it is what it is. Nothing much more to say about it.
[quote=“Whack-a-Mole, post:103, topic:946146, full:true”]
Seems to me you never answered my response to you there
.[/quote]
Which post was that which I did not answer?
Nobody is arguing with you. You’re the one that wants to turn it into a debate. We get it. You don’t like someone taking your pic without your permission and can use it for some things and you can’t even those it’s your image. We get it.
No.
You opened a thread with an interesting cite and a legitimate question and you’ve been irritating through out it because either you can grasp or you don’t like the answer.
That was answered before you even posted it. Once again, you either can’t grasp the concept or you just don’t like the answer. The fact there was not every violation of law and/or arrestable offense is an actual “crime”.
That is a generic definition from a dictionary. But as you were shown in that thread many states statutes do not classify certain violations of laws as crimes. You just couldn’t seem to get it through your head that what matters is what your state laws classifies as crimes, not your Websters.
You’re absolutely right, of course. I had mentioned in a previous post the distinction between EU-level laws (which are almost always written as expressions of principle) and the more practical versions of those laws that then get transcribed into civil code at the national level, and how there can be variations from country to country. In the later post, I overstated the principle and neglected to reference the earlier caveat.
I will note, though, that the UK got a bit of heat on this, in that a few parties argued their implementation of the data protection framework was not in alignment with the GDPR, on the point you mention as well as a few others, out of excessive deference to England’s well-established and very powerful tabloid-news culture. This alleged discrepancy would probably have been the trigger for litigation, which would then work its way up into the EU-level court system, seeking a formal ruling one way or the other. That course of appeal, now, is obviously moot.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there about copyright which isn’t helped by varying laws in different countries. However, some of the more common misunderstandings are along the lines of “once it’s on the internet it’s fair game” or “if I’m not profiting off it then it’s ok” or “no infringement intended disclaimers make any use ok.” None of those are true. Copyright is about control, it gives the creator the right to secure their work against unauthorized use, no matter their own use or the use of 3rd parties. Questions about “what’s the harm” are moral questions not legal. Questions about modeling licenses, commercial usage, and advertising are irrelevant to copyright. They’re about defamation, contract law, endorsements, etc. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, but they have nothing to do with copyright.
This Tom Scott video explains a lot of the differences, though it focuses specifically on Google/YouTube and how their apparently draconian takedown policies are driven by the copyright system.
US copyright has gotten tighter and tighter, even down to using a brief epigraph. Below is my correspondence with a publisher’s representative about permission to use a 3-word quotation:
Response from Penguin for request to quote three words from Camus’s play Caligula
Thank you for your request # xxxxx, concerning a brief selection from “Caligula” by Albert Camus.
Please note that clearing all the rights you require (world print and electronic) is a multi-step process which I anticipate will take a significant amount of time.
First, I am able to license print rights in the US & Open Market, but those print rights are subject to the estate’s approval, and it is difficult to obtain a response from their office.
Next, print rights in the UK & Commonwealth (incl. Canada) should be obtained from Penguin UK: Permissions
Finally, there is a two-step process to obtaining electronic rights. First, you must obtain the underlying electronic rights from the Camus Estate care of Editions Gallimard:
Éditions Gallimard
5 rue Gaston-Gallimard
75328 Paris cedex 07 FRANCE
Tél. : +33 (0)1.49.54.42.00
Fax : +33 (0)1.45.44.94.03
Once you have obtained the underlying electronic rights, please return to me and I will grant you the separate electronic rights to our English translation itself.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. If you wish to proceed, please confirm how this selection will appear in your work: is it used as a standalone quotation/epigraph or as an in-text citation/in the body text of your work?
We’re going to need more detail about exactly what you were asking for here, because nothing in that quoted letter tells us anything about U.S. copyright law. All it tells us is that a copyright holder is attempting to exert control over uses that might, in fact, be considered “fair use.”
Copyright holders do this all the time, because many of them are money-grubbing assholes. But the fact that a copyright holder wants to set strict limits on the usage and licensing of a three-word quotation doesn’t mean that they have the law on their side. To be quite frank, I don’t see how a three-word quotation even qualifies for copyright by itself anyway, and if you’re using the quote in a book of your own, as an epigraph or in the body text, it would certainly constitute fair use even if the three words can be subject to copyright protection.
This is an excellent point! Publishers and rights holders routinely pretend that fair use doesn’t exist. I have heard horror stories from people who made rather innocuous queries (like susan’s) and were told to jump through hoops and/or pay exorbitant costs. I have NEVER heard of a case where a rights holder responded with, “Oh, that’s fair use—you didn’t need to contact us for that.”
While I appreciate the cite, every publication workshop I’ve attended has said that copyright holders are going after even short quotes (especially for lyrics and poetry) when used commercially (e.g., as an epigram or in a novel) and that while titles are safe, even short quotations in nonfiction works may fall under copyright restrictions. They’ve said fair use is getting tighter and tighter. Every question is responded to with “seek permission.” This may be risk-aversive legal advice, but it is the current advice to writers.
The people giving this advice are idiots, and people who follow it are complicit in hollowing out and rendering useless one of the most important parts of copyright law - the principle of fair use.
To be honest, I’d actually like to see a statutory change to Title 17 whereby any effort to sue for copyright, where the court finds that the usage was clearly fair use, would leave the plaintiff open to paying both attorney fees and substantial damages to the defendant. As @erysichthon says, too many rights-holders like to pretend that fair use doesn’t even exist, and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with bullying people into submission.
But it’s not, in terms of the law. Fair use is still pretty much what it has been for years. The fact that asshole rights holders are trying to tighten or eliminate it doesn’t mean that the law has changed. The only way to fix this issue is not to cave into them.
