Breach of copyright! - photographs

[Jan vd Heuvel]

Hi All,

this is my two cents .

The maker of an artwork (photo's included) is according to the (Dutch) law the copyrightholder of the artwork (in this case let's call it photo).

The copyrightholder can sell prints of the photo, publish the photo, sell copies of the nagative or give permission to use the prints, but unless he also sells the copyright to the photo he still remains the one and only copyrightholder.

Off course there are many variations, such as selling limited copyright for a specific purpose, but that is not relevant to this discussion.

Now how about the copyrights of a photo bought through for example Ebay ?

When you buy such a photo you are not the copyrightholder of that photo, but when you use this photo for a publication, you can claim the copyrights for this photo in good faith, claiming that as far as you know this is the only remaining print of that particular photo.

The only one who can challenge that claim is another owner of a print of that photo (but if he can't proof he has bought the copyright from the original copyrightholder he has the same rights as you) or ultimately the original copyrightholder or someone who has bought the copyright or inheretid the copyrights.

And luckily for most photo's bought through Ebay the original copyrightholder can't come forward anymore and his offspring is apparantly not interested in copyrights, because they are selling the heritage of the original copyrightholder.

That means many people can claim the copyrights of a photo (many prints were swapped between "comrades") and all can use them as they please without the risk of being legally challenged by the other owners of the prints.

All this said, you can claim the copyright but you can't prove you are the one and only copyright-holder. It is case of claiming untill proved otherwise.

I am no expert in International Law, so I can't tell what differences there are in the various countries. But simple logic tells me that a legal rule for a certain country only applies to persons falling under the jurisdiction of that country.

So to my opinion if photo's are made by inhabitants of the USA and Australia and if the laws of those countries state that the copyright is ended after a certain amount of years that only applies for photo's made by people falling under the jurisdiction of those countries. Meaning that this don't apply to photo's made by people of other countries.

Just for clarification (if you are tired reading all this): a photo published in a book is certainly not become public domain, but only made available to the public to see.

Regards,
Jan

[ArtieBob]

Dear Jan,

The German(and Japanese and Italian) material in the USA from WWII I mentioned as being in the public domain are IMHO considered as “war booty”. In this respect it has nothing to do with being previously published. IIRC, at least some courts in Europe have considered such items as not subject to recovery by the previous owners, whether or not it was government or private property.. As I said, the situation is very tricky. I do not know if any European nations have the public domain category as defined in the USA. For example, similar material in GB is subject to the Crown copyright. I do not know what the laws would be in Holland, but I suspect there is little there that would be considered as WW II “booty” as most of it was going the other direction.

Best regards,

Artie Bob