A kind of legal question about photos.

[MarkRS]

This for the UK:

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/co..._copyright_law

[Graham Boak]

Thank you Mark, that's a very interesting link. So as I read it, only photographs taken by unidentifiable (or very long dead) private individuals in WW2 are out of copyright, or will be in a couple of years. Any photograph taken by a Government agent will only be out of copyright if it had already been reproduced commercially before 1963.

You still have to obtain a good original print, of course. It might make an interesting legal case to buy and publish such a photo from (say) the FAAM at their private rate, but I don't think I'm up for it.

[edwest]

The answer is to inquire first. In the US, the Copyright Office is quite nice about such things. I do have books with photos that give credit to someone/someplace or write "Reproduced with permission" followed by the name of the owner, institution or other source.

Getting permissions used to be quite common in the US, but there are those on the internet who copy what they will and their server is in Estonia or Uzbekistan. Looking at a photo is one thing, but reproducing it without permission can cause legal problems. What is called "Fair Use" in the United States is usually limited to academic and scholarly work not meant for general circulation, or brief snippets of a movie, TV program, or radio broadcast or song may be presented if you are a legitimate critic or researcher.

I'm glad to say enough of this is still happening with historical non-fiction. As far as lawyers, the first call is free in the US. Just make sure he's a copyright attorney, not someone who handles a bit of this and a bit of that.



Ed