What about using designs that are hundreds of years old, but are in a "new" publication. I teach a blackwork class to 4-5 graders (no fee, just part of the Fines Arts Block at my son's school)and copy images for them to use on their samplers, as it is easier than tracing each one individually.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robin Netherton Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 9:15 PM To: Historical Costume Subject: RE: [h-cost] costume photos > 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 _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook together at last. Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL10062697 1033_______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
