> But I'm not publishing the photos I copy. You keep using the
> word publish.
I was speaking about copyright law, not about you specifically; I didn't want
the previous comment ("you only need permission if you're making money off it")
to stand without discussion, because the issue of money is so often
misunderstood. Whether you need permission does not depend on whether money
changes hands. In your case, you may well not need permission anyway, but
whether you're making money doesn't have anything to do with that.
Copyright law focuses on publishing -- that is, creation and distribution of
copies of creative work that someone owns. I didn't follow the beginning of
this thread closely, so I don't know what you're doing or whether the law
applies to you.
I am not a lawyer, but here's my understanding of some practical situations I
often see in my own work:
If you take photos from the book, make slides, and show them to a class, you're
fine. Making slides to display for an educational presentation is well within
every interpretation of copyright law I've ever read. Note that I refer
specifically to "educational presentation." If you are putting on a show for
entertainment (even for free), you are no longer on firm ground.
If you make handouts with copies of the images, you are on muddier ground,
because people can take the images home with them. If you make a CD and
distribute it to the students, even as a "textbook" of sorts, you're over the
line (regardless of whether they pay any money). These count as "publishing."
If you put one of the pictures on a poster for a school event, you are over the
line, but probably no one will bother you about it. If you put a picture into a
newsletter or magazine, or onto a web page, you are over the line and may very
well be pursued over it. This is something I have experienced from both sides!
And when was I pursued? Not me, but the magazine I worked for. Our designer
created a cover design that used a "Superman" type treatment about "super fund
raisers" and a visual image of an office worker opening his shirt to reveal a
dollar sign treated like Superman's "S." DC Comics saw one and made us destroy
every remaining copy. I don't remember if we had to pay money too.
Another, less disastrous example. In leafing through a trade magazine, I
noticed an article on a magazine designer that included a photo of him in his
studio. Clearly visible on the wall of the studio was a piece of art showing an
illuminated alphabet -- a signed and numbered art print I recognized because I
own the same print myself. Amused, I sent a copy of the magazine to the artist,
who was a personal friend. He saw something I hadn't noticed: The article
itself used, as a decorative element, one of the illuminated letters taken from
the poster. The photo of the framed poster on the wall was fine. The lifting of
the letter from the poster and its placement as an art element in a published
article was theft. My friend sent a thank-you note to me, and sent a modest
bill for his graphic artwork to the magazine editor. The bill was paid.
I myself have had a copyright case in court, part of a group of a dozen writers
who did work for a company that declared bankruptcy before paying us. As part
of its bankruptcy proceedings, it sold its intellectual assets, including the
work that we had written. We sued on grounds that they didn't yet own copyright
to the work and thus couldn't legally sell it. We won. Having established our
claim to the property (which we didn't really care about, as the articles were
made to suit a particular publication and weren't useful to us), our lawyer
then negotiated a small settlement with the purchasing company to give up our
claim. Pennies on the dollar compared to what we would have gotten in pay for
our work, but at least it was something.
Closer to the point here: I use slides of artwork in my lectures, as many as
100 in a single lecture. Some come from books. Some come from the artwork
itself; of the latter, some of the photos were taken under explicit agreements
with the owning libraries/museums regarding how I would use the images (e.g.
research and teaching, but not publication or distribution). My use is legal;
if I disseminated the images, it would not be. When I have used images in my
published papers, I have paid for reproduction permission.
Last time I did a lecture, I was almost at the end before I learned that
someone in the audience had been using her cellphone to take a picture of every
single one of my slides. (The room is dark when I show slides, so I didn't see
her.) We had a serious talk. If one of those carefully negotiated photos
appears on a website, it could destroy my relationship with a museum. >From now
on, I will have to make an announcement that This Is Not Permitted. This
question never came up 10 years ago!
--Robin
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