An interesting take on Copyright

SlowSteve

SlowSteve

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I think most people saw the picture of the monkey which took it's own photo in the paper a couple of days ago.

This led to an initial, interesting, post on the copyright ownership of such a picture on TechDirt - an IT website - end result - the Monkey. To me, the logic seems solid if not a bit pedantic.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...y-license-its-copyrights-to-news-agency.shtml

Then it takes an interesting turn. An agency contacts TechDirt demanding the image is taken down due to lack of copyright ownership - and then later that Fair Use principles do not apply.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-agency-tells-techdirt-to-remove-photos.shtml

Just to call out, TechDirt is a US website, so the specifics of Copyright and Fair Use are a little bit different at the detail level, but the basic principles of both copyright and fair use are essentially the same in the UK and US.


Also - so I am not seen as trolling::

On a personal basis, I'm not a fan of copyright, but this comes from the fact that it causes me a lot of headaches at work, rather than being philisophically opposed to them. I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle. If I ever took a picture that someone wanted, as long as it wasn't personal - i.e. my wife of kid, then I would give that away without copyright as well. Thats becuase photography is a hobby, so I am not looking for payment. My personal view is that if someone paid me to do my hobby, I think I would stop enjoying it as much.


However, I'm aware that this attitude puts me in the minority on this forum - there are a lot of professionals and Pro-Am's on here, and you will have different view points.

I know this, and I am not looking to start a fight - I'm just interested in the forums opinions of the problem itself, and also your views on the various arguments presented.
 
As I cannot imagine a situation where monkey turns tog, I confess that I am not to hung-up about the copyright of that particular photo ... it's a bit geek-speak, nerd-nonsense to me.
However as an amateur tog I reserve the right to give copies of my pics to friends or relatives for their personal use/enjoyment but I do not give away the copyright to my pics. I can see the scenario whereby someone gets your copyright-free pics for nothing and makes money from them and frankly if anyone should make money from my pics (I wish!) then it should be me.
 
I had thought about the issue with the monkey. If the photographer gets the copyright, and the tog was the monkey...
Could it be considered a biological remote trigger? :)
 
SlowSteve said:
I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle.
Click to expand...

In most cases, most open source software is free but the majority of developers do demand that they are credited. Even though the software is free most include a copyright statement where you agree to use the software provided you keep the copyright statement intact.
 
I presume this is a followup to the elephant that paints?
 
SlowSteve said:
I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle.
Click to expand...

Side point: Actually that can cause MORE troubles depending on the licence used, the GPL for example is incredibly strict and can cause no end of issues.

And now back to our scheduled programming.
 
SlowSteve said:
I think most people saw the picture of the monkey which took it's own photo in the paper a couple of days ago.

This led to an initial, interesting, post on the copyright ownership of such a picture on TechDirt - an IT website - end result - the Monkey. To me, the logic seems solid if not a bit pedantic.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...y-license-its-copyrights-to-news-agency.shtml

Then it takes an interesting turn. An agency contacts TechDirt demanding the image is taken down due to lack of copyright ownership - and then later that Fair Use principles do not apply.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-agency-tells-techdirt-to-remove-photos.shtml

Just to call out, TechDirt is a US website, so the specifics of Copyright and Fair Use are a little bit different at the detail level, but the basic principles of both copyright and fair use are essentially the same in the UK and US.


Also - so I am not seen as trolling::

On a personal basis, I'm not a fan of copyright, but this comes from the fact that it causes me a lot of headaches at work, rather than being philisophically opposed to them. I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle. If I ever took a picture that someone wanted, as long as it wasn't personal - i.e. my wife of kid, then I would give that away without copyright as well. Thats becuase photography is a hobby, so I am not looking for payment. My personal view is that if someone paid me to do my hobby, I think I would stop enjoying it as much.


However, I'm aware that this attitude puts me in the minority on this forum - there are a lot of professionals and Pro-Am's on here, and you will have different view points.

I know this, and I am not looking to start a fight - I'm just interested in the forums opinions of the problem itself, and also your views on the various arguments presented.
Click to expand...

Despite what appears to be some knowledge "I'm not a fan of copyright, but this comes from the fact that it causes me a lot of headaches at work".

It seems to me that you have no understanding of what copyright means:thinking:;
"I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle."
Would you be happy for me to bundle up some of your code and sell it on for profit? If you took a photo of me and gave me the copyright are you happy with the notion I could sell it as a stock photo for my own profit?

You ought to understand that being happy to give something away can be done whilst retaining copyright and not being financially abused. There are licences and understandings in which you can happily work for nothing whilst still protecting yourself.:)
 
Phil V said:
Would you be happy for me to bundle up some of your code and sell it on for profit?
Click to expand...

It's perfectly possible to take the OP at his word. Releasing into the public domain is the simplest option available.

People who release things under BSD licences permit exactly what you're suggesting, with the proviso of attribution. Microsoft sold millions of copies of Windows using the BSD TCP/IP stack back in the day.

To the best of my knowledge, ftp.exe and nslookup.exe still use BSD code. The Regents of the University of California won't complain about their code being used in a commercial product.


There are a number of pieces of code released under the Unlicense, which explicitly sets the code free of any copyright encumbrances.

If you have a copy of Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Aperture, you're using SQLite in its back-end database, for which the source code is in the public domain. SQLite used in many other examples of commercial software (including the flight systems for the Airbus A350 XWB) which the authors intend to permit by their choice of (un-)licence.
 
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To address the original issue

SlowSteve said:
IThis led to an initial, interesting, post on the copyright ownership of such a picture on TechDirt - an IT website - end result - the Monkey. To me, the logic seems solid if not a bit pedantic.
Click to expand...

I tend to agree with TechDirt. Logic suggests that the pictures taken by the macaque should be in the public domain if the story reported in the press is true.

The only area where they're potentially shaky is that the photographer (whose camera it was, not the macaque) might claim that in post-processing the image, especially if it was shot in RAW, he created a derivative work, upon which he owns the copyright.
 
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I've seen a couple of threads that go backwards and forwards as to copyright ownership of this photo.

Some have said that as it was the photographer's camera, he owns copyright. Others, quite rightly, have pointed out that it's not the ownership of the camera that grants copyright to the owner, and that copyright belongs with the person pressing the button, which is where the difficulty in this particular scenario arises.

If I was the camera owner in this case, I would argue that I had commissioned the monkey to take the pictures and therefore the copyright belonged to me, notwithstanding that it wasn't me that pressed the shutter.
 
Scarecrow said:
If I was the camera owner in this case, I would argue that I had commissioned the monkey to take the pictures and therefore the copyright belonged to me, notwithstanding that it wasn't me that pressed the shutter.
Click to expand...

Except that would only work in NZ, Australia and a couple of other places based on the old UK laws.

The easiest way around this is to claim that the monkey was employed, used the photographer's equipment and the consideration to the employee was in the form of bananas, nuts or other foodstuffs; ergo the images belong to the employer! :D
 
Phil V said:
Despite what appears to be some knowledge "I'm not a fan of copyright, but this comes from the fact that it causes me a lot of headaches at work".

It seems to me that you have no understanding of what copyright means:thinking:;
"I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle."
Would you be happy for me to bundle up some of your code and sell it on for profit? If you took a photo of me and gave me the copyright are you happy with the notion I could sell it as a stock photo for my own profit?

You ought to understand that being happy to give something away can be done whilst retaining copyright and not being financially abused. There are licences and understandings in which you can happily work for nothing whilst still protecting yourself.:)
Click to expand...

Phil,

I'm assuming you didn't imply your post to be as rude as it comes accross, so I will answer genuinely.
I do have a *very* good understanding of copyright, like I say, it's a part of my job. And when I don't, I have a desk full of lawyers sitting oppisite me to deal with the really hard bits. Which is why I'm not a fan of it - my job is a software designer, and I have to spend vastly too much time talking and handling legal stuff to do with copyright, rather than doing the stuff I actually enjoy.

To answer your question.

Am I happy for you to bundle my code and sell it? --- ABSOLUTELY! I have code in some big projects - MySQL for example. This forum is built on a system called vBulletin, which takes a load of free code - MySQL being one of them, and sells it. Each time you make a post, a bit of code that I wrote gets invoked.
That makes me happy for a few reasons. a) I enjoyed the writing of the code, but I have no interest in maintaining it, so vBulletin may as well do that, b) I like the fact that people find use for something I did at home - it makes me happy and c) I don't especially care about it - it's just a lump of code. Trying to make a profit from it would take up my entire life and get me no-where. So there's no point in it - it's just hassle.

I fully understand that I can give something away without letting go of the copyright - but I choose not to. Putting any form of a restrictive copyright around a lump of code I write serves me no purpose at all, and potentially stops someone with a good idea - which they might make money out of - having an easier life, which is not in my interests either. If someone can get some value out of something that I don't care about, or do care about, and like the idea of people using, then whats the point in trying to control it?

From an absolutely personal point of view - and I am no advocating this view to others, or trying to evangelise it - I would feel exactly the same way about any photos I took.

If I took a photo, it would be because I liked the image. If someone else wanted a copy, I would give it away freely. It would be the same if a newspaper wanted a copy of the picture. I would just be chuffed that someone liked my picture.
Remember though that I'm an amatuer. I have a job with a salary, so I don't need pictures to pay for my wife's shoe habit or my mortgage. I might feel differently if I DID need pictures to pay for my family, but then again, I'm never going to be a professional Tog, so I don't think it'll ever be an issue.
 
Arguements over whether a monkey owns the copyright on an image?

Jeez, some people need to get out more. :shake:
 
Phil V said:
It seems to me that you have no understanding of what copyright means:thinking:;
"I do quite a bit of coding in my free time, and I give all of that away into the public domain as well, but again just to save any future hassle."
Would you be happy for me to bundle up some of your code and sell it on for profit?
Click to expand...


I have also released code into the public domain, not even requiring an attribution. If you want to bundle it up and sell it, go right ahead. Won't bother me.

I should note that this is code I have written in my free time, code I write at work is copyright my employer and never published as source in any case, as it forms part of products that we sell.
 
Hacker said:
Arguements over whether a monkey owns the copyright on an image?

Jeez, some people need to get out more. :shake:
Click to expand...

You're only jealous because we aren't talking about a full blood knocking the trigger! :lol:
 
To perhaps put a different spin on it, a number of HUGE artists don't even paint their own paintings.
""They're **** compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely ****ing brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel." - Damien Hirst.

Would that be a similar scenario? Who owns the copyright to that work that Rachel painted and sold under the name of Damien Hirst?
 
Has anyone actually asked the monkey? After all it may have been used to test oh, some new Alzheimers drug and actually be intelligent.

Nah stupid idea, someone might make a movie about that sometime though:) and truth can be stranger than fiction!!!!
 
Best example I can think of to make this more intuitive is anytime anyone has used some form of movement sensor to trigger the shutter.

Are we going to argue that a burgler owns the copyright to cctv footage on a movement triggered camera? He started the recording, right?

Pretty sure most here would have seen these images http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...sty-bats-swooping-lick-water-garden-pond.html

Bats breaking an infrared beam to trigger flash and shutter etc.

Common sense (and I appreciate that common sense isn't always applicable) would suggest that where the agent triggering the shutter is not an agent that can retain copyright, or knows that it is conducting activity that will result in material that could be copyrighted, copyright should rest with the person who engineered the situation in the first place, even if accidentally.

Man leaves camera, ape picks up camera and takes pic, man retains copyright.
 
I bet some of you are a bundle of fun to go out on the ale with...................:D


Scenario....Six pints in, let`s argue about who owns the copyright on a photo that a bleedin monkey took, great night out............:lol:
 
fracster said:
I bet some of you are a bundle of fun to go out on the ale with...................:D

Scenario....Six pints in, let`s argue about who owns the copyright on a photo that a bleedin monkey took, great night out............:lol:
Click to expand...

PMSL
 
Oh, and he seems to have changed his story a little :suspect:

This morning's Metro said:
He claimed he had engineered the shoot, adding: ‘I was the artist behind it.

‘It was my artistry and idea to leave them to play with the camera and it was all in my eyesight. I knew the monkeys were very likely to do this and I predicted it. I knew there was a chance of a photo being taken.’
Click to expand...

Amateur Photographer, 5th July

AP said:
Speaking to AP, David explained that his camera had been mounted on a tripod when the primates began playing around with a remote 'cable release' as he was trying to fend off other monkeys.

The photographer is keen to stress that the monkeys 'didn't run off with the camera or anything like that'.

Commenting on today's media coverage of the pictures David said: 'There has been a slight exaggeration.' Though he added: 'They haven't been Photoshopped or anything like that… The monkeys were grabbing the camera. They accidentally took the shots.'
Click to expand...
 
DemiLion said:
Except that would only work in NZ, Australia and a couple of other places based on the old UK laws.

The easiest way around this is to claim that the monkey was employed, used the photographer's equipment and the consideration to the employee was in the form of bananas, nuts or other foodstuffs; ergo the images belong to the employer! :D
Click to expand...

You pay bananas you get monkeys. Wonder if he did any chimping.... :exit:
 
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