Can I re-assign copyright and photographer info on some of my images?

Peter123

Peter123

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Peter
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I’ve sold (cheaply) several hundred of my images to a close relative.
They exif has my name as photographer and copyright.
Can I re-assign both the copyright and photographer to the new owner?
In other words, every single image will need to be altered for this amendment (maybe batch processed), which will show the new owner as the photographer and copyright owner against each image.

I’m happy for the user to be shown as the photographer and copyright.
 
Surely it only matters depending on what the relative is now going to do with them?
 
You can transfer copyright to another party (usually for a handsome fee) but you can't say they are the photographer when clearly they have not taken the image?
 
It’s hard to see why you would want mis-describe the photographer :thinking:
 
Yes you can ... but as above. :)
 
It’s a complicated story. Anyway, I’m happy with this arrangement - as I said, close relative.

Can I remove the photographer completely?
 
More to the point, why would someone be happy to take your images, and pass them off as their own, at best it's fraudulent, and least very deceiving !
 
exiftool could be used to overwrite the copyright and artist exif fields. It's very powerful and free. I use it to add these fields (my name and copyright) when importing photos, because since moving from nikon to panasonic, my new G90 has no facility to add these fields itself. I run a batch file which contains the following command:
exiftool -E -overwrite_original -copyrightnotice="©2021 myname" -Author="myname" *.rw2
Where myname is my actual name
If you want to remove the copyright and photographer instead, try:
exiftool -copyrightnotice -Author= <filename>

I also use exiftool to add lens data for my Samyang 12mm lens so that ACR will use the correct lens profile
 
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Peter123 said:
I've ditched the idea of changing the photographer, but will change the copyright.
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Though any one can change these details if they have the files unlessthere is some way to password protect them :(.
 
If it's anything like copyright in music, the copyright and the author are whatever the person who originally owned the copyright says they are. If I write a song, I can enter into a contract where I say that someone else did and that becomes the truth of the matter, no matter who actually wrote it. I'm not sure that this needs to be reflected in the meta data in the files (.AIFF, .MP3 etc.) as long as the contract supersedes the date of the actual creation of the files. The truth and the law don't have to coincide with respect to copyright. It's an agreement that you might have to prove but copyright is mostly just an agreement - with some evidence if needed.
 
Well I've basically agreed to re-assigning the copyright, that's all. Also, some of the points raised above have made me have a re-think.
I must stress I am doing this for a close family member. We help each other out when we can. We are not like the Windsors.
 
James Brady said:
If I write a song, I can enter into a contract where I say that someone else did and that becomes the truth of the matter, no matter who actually wrote it.
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Who the author of a work was is a fact that cannot be changed... you cannot legally assign authorship to someone else because that would be a lie. You can waive your moral rights though...
James Brady said:
The truth and the law don't have to coincide with respect to copyright.
Click to expand...
Yes, they do...
 
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sk66 said:
Who the author of a work was is a fact that cannot be changed... you cannot legally assign authorship to someone else because that would be a lie. You can waive your moral rights though...

Yes, they do...
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Moral rights have almost (or until I think about it a lot harder, absolutely) nothing to do with this. I have refused to sign contracts which ask me to waive my moral rights because if, for example, Donald Trump wanted to use one of my songs as his campaign music, I would want to be able to say, "No, that goes against my moral rights and I don't want to be associated with you in that way". So I understand moral rights and what they're worth.

Who the author is is simply what is agreed. There is no "truth detector" in the Performing Right Society (PRS) unless a claim of authorship is contested. If Paul McCartney wants to say that John Lennon helped him to write "Yesterday", he has the right to say that it is a "Lennon and McCartney" song. It doesn't matter whether he is telling the truth or if Paul wrote the song completely on his own. The "fact" is that the song was filed with the PRS as a Lennon and McCartney composition and that becomes the fact. The fact and the truth do not have to be the same thing. In law, Authorship can be assigned to whomsoever agrees that it can be assigned to if it is not contested.

In law (which is an ass) if a person is convicted of murder then they are in law guilty of murder. The 'fact' that they may or may not be innocent is simply irrelevant in the eyes of the law with respect to the conviction. A person convicted of murder is by definition a murderer - even if they have never killed anyone or been the cause of another person's death. If it can be proven at a later date that the conviction should be quashed, then the person, by law, could be no longer a murderer. The truth and facts and lies and contracts and authorship are not arrived at by some panoptic reality that knows who had the idea or who put it on to paper or film or digital media. It is arrived at by what is submitted/published and by who agrees to be the uncontested author(s), which might be my best mate if I've written something and I'm feeling generous.
 
James Brady said:
Moral rights have almost (or until I think about it a lot harder, absolutely) nothing to do with this. I have refused to sign contracts which ask me to waive my moral rights because if, for example, Donald Trump wanted to use one of my songs as his campaign music, I would want to be able to say, "No, that goes against my moral rights and I don't want to be associated with you in that way". So I understand moral rights and what they're worth.

Who the author is is simply what is agreed. There is no "truth detector" in the Performing Right Society (PRS) unless a claim of authorship is contested. If Paul McCartney wants to say that John Lennon helped him to write "Yesterday", he has the right to say that it is a "Lennon and McCartney" song. It doesn't matter whether he is telling the truth or if Paul wrote the song completely on his own. The "fact" is that the song was filed with the PRS as a Lennon and McCartney composition and that becomes the fact. The fact and the truth do not have to be the same thing. In law, Authorship can be assigned to whomsoever agrees that it can be assigned to if it is not contested.

In law (which is an ass) if a person is convicted of murder then they are in law guilty of murder. The 'fact' that they may or may not be innocent is simply irrelevant in the eyes of the law with respect to the conviction. A person convicted of murder is by definition a murderer - even if they have never killed anyone or been the cause of another person's death. If it can be proven at a later date that the conviction should be quashed, then the person, by law, could be no longer a murderer. The truth and facts and lies and contracts and authorship are not arrived at by some panoptic reality that knows who had the idea or who put it on to paper or film or digital media. It is arrived at by what is submitted/published and by who agrees to be the uncontested author(s), which might be my best mate if I've written something and I'm feeling generous.
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Trump's use of your song would not be a violation of your moral rights just because you don't like him.
You're basically saying you can do whatever you want as long as no one contests it and you don't get caught... well, ok then...
 
James Brady said:
Moral rights have almost (or until I think about it a lot harder, absolutely) nothing to do with this. I have refused to sign contracts which ask me to waive my moral rights because if, for example, Donald Trump wanted to use one of my songs as his campaign music, I would want to be able to say, "No, that goes against my moral rights and I don't want to be associated with you in that way". So I understand moral rights and what they're worth.

Who the author is is simply what is agreed. There is no "truth detector" in the Performing Right Society (PRS) unless a claim of authorship is contested. If Paul McCartney wants to say that John Lennon helped him to write "Yesterday", he has the right to say that it is a "Lennon and McCartney" song. It doesn't matter whether he is telling the truth or if Paul wrote the song completely on his own. The "fact" is that the song was filed with the PRS as a Lennon and McCartney composition and that becomes the fact. The fact and the truth do not have to be the same thing. In law, Authorship can be assigned to whomsoever agrees that it can be assigned to if it is not contested.

In law (which is an ass) if a person is convicted of murder then they are in law guilty of murder. The 'fact' that they may or may not be innocent is simply irrelevant in the eyes of the law with respect to the conviction. A person convicted of murder is by definition a murderer - even if they have never killed anyone or been the cause of another person's death. If it can be proven at a later date that the conviction should be quashed, then the person, by law, could be no longer a murderer. The truth and facts and lies and contracts and authorship are not arrived at by some panoptic reality that knows who had the idea or who put it on to paper or film or digital media. It is arrived at by what is submitted/published and by who agrees to be the uncontested author(s), which might be my best mate if I've written something and I'm feeling generous.
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Can I introduce you to the legal concepts commonly known as 'Fraud' and 'Passing Off'?
 
DemiLion said:
Can I introduce you to the legal concepts commonly known as 'Fraud' and 'Passing Off'?
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Can I introduce you to the concept of evidence? Is something a fact because we believe it is a fact? Because we can prove it's a fact? Because it simply is a fact? Copyright is a law and in that respect, one has to be able to provide evidence in order to back up any claims of ownership of an original work (whether it be a song or a photograph or a written work of poetry or a novel or even biographical and factual texts).
There is no law preventing a person from saying anything they like about a dead person. One can say things that don't need to be backed up with evidence, even if they could be proven to be false if evidence was brought. I'm just saying that if you can't prove something, you can't say that it's true or false and you can't find someone guilty of lying about it - even if that is about who wrote an original song and the author wants for some reason to say that it was somebody else's work - for whatever reason.
 
sk66 said:
Trump's use of your song would not be a violation of your moral rights just because you don't like him.
You're basically saying you can do whatever you want as long as no one contests it and you don't get caught... well, ok then...
Click to expand...
Yes, it absolutely would and for as little as my not liking him - that would be enough. A moral right cannot be questioned. If you are the holder of the moral rights - assuming you haven't been dumb enough to sign them away - your right it to have the final say in how your material may be used and by whom.
And, I'm only speaking legally, not morally on the point of what you can get away with if you don't get caught. Legally, there is no crime if it doesn't come to light.
 
James Brady said:
Yes, it absolutely would and for as little as my not liking him - that would be enough. A moral right cannot be questioned. If you are the holder of the moral rights - assuming you haven't been dumb enough to sign them away - your right it to have the final say in how your material may be used and by whom.
And, I'm only speaking legally, not morally on the point of what you can get away with if you don't get caught. Legally, there is no crime if it doesn't come to light.
Click to expand...
Man, I really hope you are not a working professional artist as you seem to indicate you are...
 
James Brady said:
Yes, it absolutely would and for as little as my not liking him - that would be enough. A moral right cannot be questioned. If you are the holder of the moral rights - assuming you haven't been dumb enough to sign them away - your right it to have the final say in how your material may be used and by whom.
And, I'm only speaking legally, not morally on the point of what you can get away with if you don't get caught. Legally, there is no crime if it doesn't come to light.
Click to expand...

It is attitudes like that that give Photographers a bad reputation.
 
The original proposal was strange but passing the rights to commercially exploit the images would not be that odd. A member of my Camera Club took a series of local B&W images in the 1930's and produced a book. When he died he left the rights to exploit the images to a friend of his (another club member) in writing. This has been useful because from time to time various people have requested the use of some of the images and he has generally given permission for no cost if it was for a charitable use or to support the club. The original images were on film but the principle is the same.

Dave
 
I can't see what all the fuss is about. Nothing strange at all. I own the copyright. I can do what I want with it. From the answers above I can re-assign. I've fully explained why I want to do this (no need to If I didn't want). I thank those who have technically told me how to do this.
 
Peter123 said:
I can't see what all the fuss is about. Nothing strange at all. I own the copyright. I can do what I want with it. From the answers above I can re-assign. I've fully explained why I want to do this (no need to If I didn't want). I thank those who have technically told me how to do this.
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I think no one has said you can’t transfer copyright, the questions are over mis-representing the photographer which is difficult to see why anyone woukd do that for a legitimate reason and you haven’t given one :( Probably there is one.
 
Further up the thread I said I had ditched this idea. Only copyright now.
 
Keeping things simple, I would have thought that listing the stock you passed to your relative together with an accompanying letter possibly formulated by a Solicitor stating that you have given up all the rights and royalties from the material to (Insert name) and countersigned by yourself, the person who is getting them and countersigned by the solicitor plus of course dated.

It should be no more difficult that selling a classic car to another, just the items are a little different..
 
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