Well, my google skills elude me here. Some time ago, I saw a b&w photograph of a group of children, with the text of what they would be when they grew up. One child was hanging upside down, she was to be the artist. My wife (professional artist) wants to use it on her site - but I can’t find it anymore.
Can anybody find it?
Never mind, found it the hard way (browsing through my facebook page, it was a few years ago). Reported for closing.
be careful that it’s not something owned by a firm like Getty, they expect to be paid for the use of their images.
Yes, good advice. Anyway, if there’s copyright on it we’d respect that. A reverse google image so far yields many sites using it without credit.
For instance: http://www.capital-moments.com/unemployment-laid-bare/.
Yes, there’s a copyright on it. I have no idea who owns that copyright, but I know it’s there, because someone always owns a copyright.
I didn’t say that a human always owned the copyright.
Not true, of course. Many works are public domain.
That image is recent enough that someone probably does have a copyright on it. But I expect that close to 100% of the images posted on Facebook are posted without permission of the copyright holder or even knowledge of who that might be.
Well, yes, there are old works that have fallen into the public domain. And there are also works produced by an agent of the US government as part of their governmental duties, which are likewise public domain, even from their creation. “Always” was hyperbole on my part. But there are only a few categories of exceptions, and it seems incredibly unlikely that the image in question falls into any of them. Even works which the original artist intend to share freely generally just have an extremely permissive blanket license, but the artist still owns the copyright (in fact, I’m not even certain that it’s possible to completely relinquish the copyright).
And for what it’s worth, I would maintain that the monkey selfie picture is indeed copyrighted, and that the monkey owns the copyright. But I’m not sure if any court has ever ruled on that case.
Link, but you can find the citations on your own. That, of course, assumes American law, which doesn’t create the “moral rights” which some countries explicitly do not provide any way for artists to abandon, much to the dismay of everyone who wants to release a work into the public domain worldwide, and cannot, due to those nonsensical laws.
I think a court has… let me check…
The most recent case I can find says the image is in the public domain because a monkey can’t own a copyright, a victory for the idea that laws should make sense. I found information PETA took up the case, on their own behalf, of course, but I can’t find any evidence the case actually continued from there.
It seems to be most commonly used on a motivational poster entitled “Be The Girl On The Right”. It’s hard to figure out who did it first and who owns the original photo.
